I have a Garmin NUVI 255WT that I want hard wired on a DynaGlide with no fairing. I have a Ram mount and took the bike to my local dealer to run the wiring. They cut the cigarette lighter plug off the cord and hard wired it through the ignition switch, so the GPS would only get power with the ignition in the ON position. The unit worked for a short time an quit. I was able to exchange for a replacement and after being on the bike for just a few minutes it became unstable and eventually went permanently dead. I now have another exchanged brand new unit and need to know why they are burning out. I have seen a thread that mentioned that Garmin's all only use 5 volts, so maybe that's the whole problem. If so, what needs to be done to step the voltage down? BTW, the dealer is working with me on this and I know they will do their part to make it right.

 

You figured it out the cigarett lighter plug steps the voltage down as many of today's electronics devices require. You need to go to Radio Shack and get a cigarett lighter female for the shop to wire to the bike and then plug in the garmon plug to the wired female. The shop should have known better.

 

Try this..sales@gpsgeek.com...

 

Got a battery tender pig tail on the bike? Use this. Don't let those monkeys touch your bike again.

 

I bet the inside of the plug they cut off houses a voltage regulator also....Shop tech should know better.

 

http://www.powerletproducts.com

 

As far as I know,to hardwire your GPS you need what they call a barewire kit
http://www.gpscity.com/gilsson-bare-...wer-cable.html
That is what I have been using on my nuvi for a couple of years, recently I cleaned up all my wiring with a Magic Power block, soldering iron, shrink wrap and zip ties. (getting ready for road trip)

 

Well, you can hard wire your wire into the bike, what you can't do is take the cigarette lighter part out. Reason is that there's a circuit board in there, and at the very least its converting the 12v that your bike battery is putting out to the 5v in your USB (assume that's what you have) input to your GPS. So, if you're a little bit on the ball, you'll simply hard wire the 12 volts feeding to the circuit board into the bike. Or, a simpler solution as others have suggested is just get a cigarette addapter and plug into that. What you can not do is plug a 12 volt battery into a 5v USB port, and I'm a bit shocked that someone at a Harley dealership didn't know that.

 

I have the same kit on both bikes. Works like a charm!

 

Absolutely!! A bare wire kit. No wonder your blowing up putting 12v into a Nuvi.

Here's how I did mine (on a Heritage).

http://picasaweb.google.com/Chet0318/RAMNUVIGSPPower#