GPS

[TommyA]

I did a search for GPS, but didn't find much. I have no knowledge of GPS, so any help/suggestions would be appreciated.

My BRP is now a road piggy as it has been converted to supermoto and street licensed. So, jumping and the typical offroad abuse is not as much of a consideration in choosing a GPS.

My questions are:

What type are you using (ie: handheld)?

What is the best brand?

How does it mount?

Since my BRP will be onroad only, it should run on the batteries no problem, right?

Thanks in advance! ?

[don87xr600]

Garmin seems to be the prefered brand, many gps's run on 3 volts, go to cyroactive.com for mounts and tips. The vibration is from your big thumper motor, tape you batteries in!

[qadsan]

I have a Garmin GPS V on mine and like it a lot. It's mounted with a Touratech MVG mount from Cycoactive, which you can see at the following link. The guys at Cycoactive have been great to deal with, know their stuff and they sell GPS's too.

http://www.cycoactive.com/gps/gps_mounts.html

I looked at all kinds of GPS's and picked the Garmin V because of it's size, mounting options, had a fair amount of memory, had a higher resolution screen than other comparable GPS's, came with good software & cables, has auto routing (good for the road), easy to download new trails from other users, etc. I also considered the GPS 176 and that's really what I wanted because it had expandable memory, a larger screen, higher resolution, faster processor for quicker screen updates, etc. There were several downsides to the 176 and I wasn't sure how much I was going to use the GPS anyway, so I opted for the V to try out and I've been happy ever since. The initial cost of the 176 is significantly more than the GPS V and you still have to buy memory, software, cables, memory card reader, etc, and the battery life was terrible. It also didn't have auto routing and it was also kind of bulky looking on a bike, but the larger display sure was nice and I liked the idea of expandable memory because I can't put as much stuff on my GPS V as I'd like to. The expandable memory on the GPS 176 can be placed in a reader and read or written to at much faster speeds than the GPS V. It takes ~30 minutes for me to upload all new maps to my GPS V because of the limitations of its archetecture, but I don't make changes too often unless I'm riding out of state, but street maps chew up a lot of space, especially in Southern California.

Cycoactive also sells a trick little AC/DC converter that can run your GPS from your bike and it can fit under the seat. All you need to do is tie it into the existing wiring and run the appropriate cable to the GPS mount so your GPS plugs right in. If you put the GPS V on the mount while it's running from the batteries, it will switch over to the bikes power once the engine is running. Once you stop your bike's engine, the GPS will detect it and ask you to push a button within 30 seconds if you want to continue using the GPS on the internal batteries or it will power the GPS off automatically to conserve battery life.

[JohnnyAirtime]

Couldn't find much???

Search the General topic too... using Garmin, Magellan, GPS, RAM as key words... you should get a butt load of responses.

Lots of people use Garmin... I guess I'm the rebel when I (and all my buddys) use Magellan Meridians. I hard wire mine to my bike for no hassles of batteries, use a RAM mount to mount it (to everything I own)... and it works awesome!

Here it is on my quad;

[TommyA]

Thanks for the replies!

qadsan,

Thanks so much for all the detailed information. ?

Johnnyairtime,

I didn't think to look in that category. Thanks for the suggestion.