Looking to put a GPS on my Heritage classic. Looking for thoughts on best one and if there is a model that can be wired into bike.

 

Depending on your bike I think their is an un used 12v wire in the harness under your tank you could use for power.

 

Thanks. I'll have to investigate that. Depending on the GPS model, maybe the battery life is all I need. Many models out there. Looking for thoughts on solid GPS, not needing all bells and whistles, just basic GPS functions.

 

I'm setting up a rig to use one on my stripped '87 Sloptail. I no longer have a speedometer and decided it'd be nice to have one every now and then. I bought a power outlet and a velcro armband for an iPod, or something like it. The GPS we use in the car fits snugly into the armband holder and it straps around my toolbag. Plug it into the outlet that is hidden under the tank panel and I have a speedo.

I looked at a couple so-called motorcycle versions of various brands of GPS's and was surprised by the prices - seemed to average around $400 - 500. Crazy high, and more than I'll pay.

 

i have a basic garmin 205 wide unit mounted to the bars with a ram mount system. works great. the ram mount is very secure and made in the USA.

just make sure you have the gps in mind if you go with a ram mount (mine was $40 shipped) since you have to order the cradle for per model.

I also would go with the garmin over a tomtom I loved how customisable the tomtom was but it was only right less then 1/2 the time, other times its off a couple of blocks to a couple of miles. tried 3 of them with 2 different maps, then switched to garmin and am still on my first one since it works so well.

 

i got the Nuvi 255 and it works great but always wants to ride the highways. Tried different setting and that takes you 40 miles out of your direction to get home. Just wish it had a setting for back roads. But it always gets me where I want to go.

 

you should be able to turn off highway and toll roads routing options in the nav. settings.

 

I just bought the Nuvi 1300 and had it out today in my trk for the main run,went to a area up north,put in the address and it took me away I never went before(short cuts).I even went off the route and it would tell me to turn to get back to main route and then it would recalculate for the route I was on...all in all it worked great.....
Doing the free download now as I type this.....
It isnt waterproof but for 149.00 Iam not complaining......Zumo would be nicer but they aint cheep...

 

Thanks all for the info. Do you run it just on the internal battery or do you have it wired to the bike battery?

 

Just to add my 2 cents, since I may be looking at getting one myself.

The Zumo, while expensive, uses solid state memory rather than a hard drive to store the maps info. This means that it is less likely to fail on you when riding due to vibration. Hard drives don't like to be jostled. But, it would be nice to hear from people with "normal" GPS units as to whether they are seeing problems using them with road bumps/bike vibrations.

The other thing about Zumos is that they are Bluetooth enabled, so if you have a Bluetooth headset you can make phone calls on the road. I believe the Zumos also act as MP3 players and will play music via Bluetooth to your headset as well. These two features aren't all that important to me, but this last one I can envision using...

The Zumo not only plots a course for you, but also remembers where you've been. So say you decide to deviate from the course to explore a back road, and decide that you really like that back road.... if only you could remember the name of it and where it was!! The Zumo remembers it for you so that you can go back over your route after the ride.