I really need help...

Well my local Honda does. I have a Garmin Zumo 550 that I am trying to get working on my Honda VFR1200. Honda have now had three goes at fitting this thing.

1st time. They did not put the cradle in place. Honda just connected up the power lead. I got it home, put in the cradle, connected the GPS lead and GPS and nothing.... the bike would not even start. I disconnected the mains cable from the cradle and the bike fired up....
2nd time. I took the bike back. They moved the lead and told me all was good. They were having to press the on button on the GPS to get it to come on. It was now using the internal on the GPS. I had asked them to intall it so that the GPS will come on only when the ignition is turned on. I do not want the battery to be drained.
3rd time. They are now saying the GPS is faulty. If I connect the GPS to the car using the 12V cable and cradle then all is well.

Have you installed one of these? Where did you connect it to? Some Honda dealers suck......... Mainly the one in Calgary... Rocky Mountain bloody Honda...
Thanks
Ian

I had this working on my 2008 VFR800 with no probs..... wires are now different from 2008... who would have thought.

 

You can not be serious!!!

OK I run a TomTom Rider (not a Garmin unit), but assuming you are not colour blind - then connecting up the wiring for a power cradle requires only very basic skills - the biggest hassle being to remove enough of the fairing (without breaking bits) to run and secure the wires.

Really if staff at a dealership are having issues, just to wire in a GPS unit, then I would not be going back there.

I can't think its difficult - you probably just need to locate and tap in neatly to two wires. The VFR wiring should be able to handle the extra load - assuming its not the uprated model with warp drive and laser beams The cradle simply needs a good ground which could be simply provided by running a wire from the negative battery terminal, and finding a live feed from something on the bike which only goes live when the ignition is turned on. On 6th Gens the feed to the rear brake light was a good choice, and I suspect would work OK on the 1200's as well. I can only think they let a 1st day trainee loose on you bike - which I guess is fine provided they supervise them - but your experience thus far suggests you will be better off going the DIY route or taking the bike to pretty much any autoelectrician if you are wary of spoiling things.

Hope you get this sorted - let us know how you get on.

SkiMad

 

Why can you just run the Positive to the head light? That will only on if you turn on the ignition

 

use the 12 V accessory socket from Honda

 

I went back to see them yesterday. I asked if they had grounded the GPS..... head scratching started... I walked away after being told they will have it working by Monday evening.....

 

Mthinks the Honda folks need to talk to the Garmin folks.

If your GPS runs backward you will know they got the wiring wrong.

 

I have been down to the dealer. They had asked me to email the installation instructions on Saturday on how to install a Garmin Zumo 550. We are now four days later and I had heard nothing. I went in and the mechanic and the service manager did not even know where my bike was. They had not seen it since Saturday. Why did I need to email the instructions then? Why have they not contacted Honda Tech for help or even Garmin? Why have they not contacted me in the past few days to let me know what is going on? (I have called and left messages and no one gets back to you) I had supplied them with a new replacement cradle and power cord as they are saying that the fault lies there and not the installation. This has just come off a 2008 VFR800 where it all worked fine. In the box with the new cradle was the security screw driver to get the GPS in and out of the new and old cradle. This was never given to the tech. He has now broken the back of the GPS that the security screw went in to, this stops the GPS from being stolen from the bike. He has also stripped the top of the screw. He said he was never given the srew drivers. (they had two of them... one from the old and one from the new). Nobody asked anyone or passed on all the gear he needed to do the job that I had given them....... I was told he is a great tech as he has trained to work on Prius cars.......eeerrrrr this is a Honda VFR1200 and not a f##cking Prius.
By the way...... Honda Canada are not interested as this is a franchise Honda Powersport Dealer....... Don't ask me how mad I am... three weeks to install a GPS and still waiting

 

Hey VFR1200

When I used to live on Calgary a number of years ago I always had good luck dealing with the guys at Blackfoot Motorsports down near Blackfoot Trail and 46 Ave SE. No idea what they are like to deal with now as I have not lived in Calgary since 1996, but if the guys you are dealing with now can't seem to find their butts with two hands and a flashlight, maybe a different installer would be in order. Hopefully you get it installed before long.

 

I don't know if this will be any help to you or not, but here goes. Today I installed a hardwire kit for my Droid, since I plan to use it for music and voice nav on an upcoming trip. I'm a mechanic by trade (almost 30 years now) and am very good with electronics. I couldn't justify buying the quartet harness from abroad for the outrageous price when I'm perfectly capable of wiring things myself. But since the connector is there for the quartet harness already, it seemed like good a place as any to tap in for power. BTW, my boss has an ST1300 and has the quartet harness for it and they are DEFINITELY NOT the same! Anyway, I probed the four wires at the Quartet harness connector to see what was actually there and was surprised at what I found. There's a ground, of course. A constant 12v source (unswitched), a switched 12v source, and a regulated 5v source!! That's the one that caught me totally by surprise. I don't know what your GPS uses for source voltage, but of course USB is 5v regulated. Had I known ahead of time that there was a 5v regulated source there, I would have chopped up a cheapo micro USB cable instead of buying a regulated hardwire kit. Water under the bridge now. Anyway, I didn't bring home my little cheat sheet, but here's the terminals as I remember them. I'm a Toyota mechanic and Toyota ALWAYS numbers their terminals this way, so bear with me. Looking into the open end of the Quartet harness connector on the bike with the locking tab at the top, terminals would be #1, top left...#2, top right...#3, bottom left...#4, bottom right (sorry I didn't take pics while it was apart). Pin 1 was the 5v regulated, pin 2 was 12v switched, pin 3 was ground, and pin 4 was 12v constant. I tied my hardwire into the 12v switched. I had thought to tie it into the 12v constant until I put an ammeter across it and found the hardwire had a 6 ma parasitic draw. Seems like alot for a bike battery so I went with the switched instead. Anyway, I don't know if this info will help you any or not, but maybe someone will find it useful.

Laterz,
D Dave

 

That 6 ma parasite is being caused by satellite driven Oprah re-runs. Both Tom-Tom and Garmin are experiencing this.

 

Apparently, the problem is even more widespread than we previously realized, since I had neither a Garmin or TomTom plugged in. Dirty bastards are everywhere!!

 

So is Oprah.

 

i didn't do this on my VFR yet but I have a Zumo on the ST1300 ... I wired it into the quartet harness like someone else did here. It was really easy ... just find the live wires and voila 2 wires crimped in ...

on a 1992 Zephyr I installed my other Garmin streetpilot and just bought a relay kit from twisted throttle and plugged it into the battery...relayed to the tail light power and i put the wires from the garmin into the fuse block, voila done.

it isn't that hard, just 2 wires ? !?

 

I'm thinking maybe plug this Honda dealer into some 110 to jumpstart him..

 

Welcome back Billy. Missed ya for awhile there buddy. ;-}

 

Sorry, sometimes I get behind on my Oprah shows and go on a binge until I catch up.

 

Better start putting them on the DVR now! Word on the street is she's goin' down! But fear not...I'm sure the reruns will live on long after we're all gone. ray:

 

Do you have an addy for those Oprah porn shows? My DVR is all warmed up..

 

She's not really my type, but maybe you could try www.oprahsgoindown.com, or possibly www.biggirllovin.com.

 

Oprah shows up at the latest diet outfit. She is desperate to lose weight. The dude tells her they can do it only if she does everything she is told and sticks to the regimen.

She says OK and signs up.

The dude tells her to go over to the wall across the room and get down on her hands and knees. She does it but after three moves to three walls she asks if this is part of the program.

The dude says, "No not really, we are having a new couch delvered and I just wanted to get an idea where it would look best.