gps holder?

I looked all around for a GPS holder for my bike but could not find one . I decided to make my own and have a quick mock up that I made in a few hours in my shop at work. It attaches to the plastic that covers the ignition. I would like to run power just in case the battery dies so would it be safe to run a power cable like a car cig lighter? My thought was that I run it under the tank and have the cable from my device plug somewhere around where the horn attaches. Here is a pic of my holder but I am making a clean version of it slightly different size so i can the gps in and out easily. It`s real snug as is.

 

side view

 

Look up RAM mounts. That's what I use

 

I got a mount that hooks to the handle bars and holds my phone in a cradle. Phone also does GPS. I don't recall where I got it. I also just added a cig lighter plug to charge the phone. GPS will kill it quickly.

I have a small front fairing, I put the lighter plug inside that near the bottom of the windsheild. Wired into the headlight bucket. There was an unsued power lead in my headlight bucket so I grabbed that. It's always on but my plug has no lights or anything so it should be fine.

The plug is now right between my gauges and I can plug up the phones cord, slide the extra behind the gauges into the fairing and plug up the phone. No long ride with it yet but it worked fine for the few miles from my shop to my house.

I'll get pics if you want.

 

pics would be great thanks...

 

Be glad you ain't in California, the heathens here would take care of that real quick!

 

How many carbon credit offsets would I have to buy in the settlement?

 

A GPS and a motorcycle....for me, never the twain shall meet!

 

I hear ya brother but sometimes I like to just take turns and go whereever. Also the other day my wife wanted to go to a track meet for my daughter and we had never been to the even site so it would have been nice to have. I dont think I will use it all the time but it is handy.

 

Agreed. And there are places I won't visit again on four wheels without one....Washington DC for example. What a nightmare that was.

 

+1million on that one. DC isn't too bad. DC at 11pm on a friday night? THAT'S a B**CH!

 

I agree to a certain extent, but if you are going long distances to destinations you've never been to before, they are irreplaceable.
Here's my example: a couple of years ago I went to the Moto GP at Indy, was using the GPS and everything was fine until I got into Indy proper. There was major hiway construction and where my GPS was indicating that I should exit, there was none. Now it's getting late, been riding for about 8-9 hours, so I took the first exit and hit the side streets. Believe me when I say I'd have been totally lost, I knew the approximate direction in relation to where I exited the hiway so just kept riding and the GPS kept giving me directions. Ended up at the campsite after about 10 hrs. on the bike and set up my tent by flashlight.
But I do agree that sometimes it's just nice to set off riding, get to an intersection and the biggest problem facing you is, "do I go straight, turn left or turn right"

 

I went for a little ride last night just to test out my holder --it works good and is adjustable and removeable so now all I need to do is figure out how to provide power to it without blowing the damn thing up.

 

Here is what I use. I'm just too darn lazy make one myself. Found it on Ebay.
Water resistant, battery back up and just attaches to the bars, though mine usually sits in my tank bag.

GN032+SPH+WPCS-B: Powered Bike Mount Case for TomTom

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie ... K:MEWAX:IT

 

Here's the picture.


You can just barely see the lighter plug behind the gauges. The phone mounts on the right side of the handle bars there.

The part you see is the base of it. THe mount looks like this:
http://www.htcdepot.com/igrip-universal ... 6A1744.htm

Works pretty good. Though my phones screen is a bid hard to see in the sun light.

 

Whether your gps/phone charger cable is usb or cigeratte lighter socket based, wiring it in is relatively simple.

Grab a splitter plug that comes with a cord from the auto section of a major store. Many now have multiple 12V and USB plugs built into the splitter
plug. (Alternatively just get a single 12V extension kit).

Also grab a modern inline fuse package and possibly a relay (in case splitter has an always on "light" feature :evil: OR if you don't want to charge anything while the bike is off).

Strip the plug end of the adapter and using the fuse wire it to the battery.

If you want to use the relay, use the blue (technically blue/white I think) wire that runs to your tail lights (always on with the ignition).

I'm not coherent enough atm to give a better description, but that should get you started...