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GPS installation


craigsinclair

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I've snagged a bunch of info from this forum so I thought it only fair to post some. 

 

I hardwired and mounted a Garmin Zumo 660LM on my 2001 Rosso Mandello. It was pretty straightforward, except I made my own mounting bracket. It went as follows:

 

My bike has the holes in the top fork crown for riser bars even though the bike came with and currently has clip ons on it. I've seen these riser bar mounts on other V11s but not all V11s. Anyway, I always thought the bolts were kind of ugly but figured it would be a good place to mount a GPS. So I fabricated a metal bracket that is held in place by the bolts that were in the holes in the fork crown. It was pretty simple, a small bent base plate that clears the top of the steerer and a plate welded on at 90 degrees for the GPS mount to mount to. Like so:

 

gps1

 
It's pretty basic, but it looks a lot better with paint. Finished product.
 

gps2

 
The GPS base mounted onto my bracket with the hardware Garmin supplied to mount it to the RAM kit. Next to mount the unit onto the fork crown. I had to lower the clip ons on the fork legs a bit to get a wrench on the nut on the bottom side of the mounting bolts which was easy enough. The homemade mount bolted on nicely and I moved the clip-ons back up and tightened them into place. I didn't like where the RAM would have put the GPS, it would have always been sticking up in the air or blocking something. On the crown it's centered, solidly mounted, and out of the way. 
 

gps3

 
I'm happy with how minimal the mount is, and how quickly the wire disappears under the dash. And the Garmin "blank" that covers up the dock is a nice touch. 
 
So, mounted, now to give it some power. 
 
Ideally the power would be "switched" so you wouldn't have to worry about draining the battery when not running. The headlight is a good power source that can handle a small drain on the circuit to power a GPS. The first step is to remove the headlight which is easily done by removing the two bolts on the sides of the light housing at 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock. That's it, two bolts, and you'll have the headlight hanging from its wiring harness. Disconnect the wiring harness, it will be easier to work on this on your work bench or kitchen table or lap.
 

This picture is of the 4 wire harness disconnected. The light housing side of the connection is zip tied to the bike so you'll have to give that a snip to get it off. 

 

gps5

 
My desire was to connect in the GPS power without making it permanent. I'm not planning on selling the bike any time soon, or the GPS, but it felt right to be able to remove the wiring unit without have to cut anything or make any repairs after. So I found these weather resistant spade connectors that I was going to splice into the power and ground wires. 
 

gps7

 
I decided to splice them into the headlight housing unit side of the wiring figuring it would be a lot easier to replace that short piece should I screw something up. The headlight power wire is the green and grey one, and the black wire is the ground. You can see both here:
 

gps8

 

I cut the wire, stripped off a small piece from either side of the cut, put both ends into the spade bit, and crimped the whole thing together. The bike would work like this as if nothing had happened. 
 

gps9

 
Garmin gives you enough wire to run the power connection pretty much anywhere on the bike. I thought about trimming back the Garmin wire so it was a cleaner install but there's always a chance that I would sell the GPS or move it to a different bike. Also, Garmin mounts the fuse at the tail end of the wire and all the headphone/mic/usb connections are bundled and only split out at the end so cutting it back much would mean a lot of reconnecting fittings. So a couple of zip ties and it was all bundled up and tucked in under the instruments. I wasn't interested in the USB, headphones, and microphone options on the Zumo 660LM so I taped over the ends of the connectors to prevent corrosion and tucked them up under the dash as well. 
 

gps10

 
I attached the other side of the spade connectors to the GPS mount wires and plugged them into the new ones spliced into the head lamp harness, and reconnected the harness as well.
 

gps12

 
Reinstalled the headlight and gave it a quick test. Turned the ignition on and it asked me if I wanted to go into "motorcycle mode" which means the mount was getting power. Good sign. And when I turned the ignition off it sensed the power loss.
 

gps13

 

Everything worked perfectly. 

 

If I were to do it again:

 

I would make the connection even cleaner without cutting any wires making removal such that you would never know it was installed. I'd do this by connecting inside the headlight housing. If you take the headlight out you'll find this connector which I've opened to show the inside of it. 

 

gpsx

 
Each lead comes out of the plastic housing. I'd connect directly to the power tabs inside the housing.

 

There is a fuse "in line" at the end of the Garmin power harness. This makes it too big to feed into the headlight housing (the opening in the housing is just big enough to feed the wires through but not the fuse housing) so you'd have to extend the wiring past the fuse for it to reach the headlight connector. I'd suggest doing this by soldering onto the headlight connector tabs (remove the wires from the plastic connector so as to not melt the connector), running the wire out of the housing, and attaching a spade connector to the end of the extension. Then I'd put spade connectors on the wiring harness ends and connect them outside the housing. This way you can still easily completely remove the headlight housing from the bike. Otherwise the wire would be permanently fixed to the headlight at one end and the GPS mount at the other end. Also, you don't have to dismantle the headlight housing to get to the GPS fuse which is outside of the headlight housing in this configuration. 

 

I think that's it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

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nice job. thanks for the great post. how are you posting the cool descriptive photos?

 

Thanks. You'll have to upload the images to your gallery before posting to the forum and then as you compose your post you click on the "My Media" icon in the forum post editor tool bar. You'll be given 4 options in the pop up, one of which is "Gallery Images" Click on that, it will bring up all your photos and then click on the photo you want and then "Finished" and it will embed a script into your message that places the image mid message. Like this:

 

 

guzzi_for_bow.jpg
 
 
Easy.
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