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Hard wiring Tom Tom Rider 400 2014 DL1000

3K views 16 replies 8 participants last post by  Psionmark 
#1 ·
Hey folks!
I am sure this has been discussed in depth, however, I have been searching the forums and cannot seem to find anything definitive. I would like to hard wire the Tom Tom Rider handlebar mount directly to my 2014 1000. I want to leave my 12v free for charging other devices. Can anyone give me some advice for this and/or provide a link to a previous discussion on this topic?
I am pretty sure the rear light is the way to go in terms of attaching and I have heard Eastern Beaver has a plug and play option. Any advice and help would be appreciated!
 
#2 ·
I highly recommend the Eastern Beaver PC-8 fuse block, especially if you want something close to "plug and play". I am not the most mechanically, or electrically, inclined but I installed one on my 2011 650 as well as on my 2018 1000 with no problems. On both I connected circuits for battery tender, heated gear, and hard wired GPS. The fuse block makes it super easy to add electrical accessories and have them connected to switched or constant power while keeping everything tidy. The hardest part ends up being routing wires which is really not difficult, just takes a bit of time to get it the way you want them.

Edit: If you search the forum you'll find a bunch of posts about both hard wiring GPS as well as fuse block installs / info. I suggest using Google to search the forum - e.g. "site:stromtrooper.com PC-8 GPS"
 
#3 ·
Defiantly eastern Beaver for plug and play relay kit and their PC8 fusebox (which gives you both switched and unswitched power.)

Everyone's different but I prefer my GPS to not be on switched power. I don't know abut the Tom Tom but my Zumo's are very little power draw the odd time I forget to shut off and nice to have powered when I stop if I want to search things or build routes while stopped.

..Tom
 
#4 ·
Another vote for products from Eastern Beaver. I have a 3 Circuit Solution on my ST1300 (all unswitched), and I just ordered another 3 circuit solution for my Vstrom (also, all unswitched). Great, simple and effective products.

As far as switched vs unswitched, that's up to you. I take the GPS off every time so I'm not worried about it being powered all the time, plus I want external powerlets or other cables to be on all the time for charging/multimeter checks. And I like to (sometimes) run a wire under the topbox to charge electronic devices while riding, or while at a rest stop.

Alexi
 
#6 ·
I have the Zumo and it is wired directly to my battery, I hated the thing wanting to shut down every time I turned the ignition off.


If you want it on switched power you can just use a piggyback spade fitting and get your power from the horn, a quick & easy solution.
 
#7 ·
Thanks for the info!
I am completely clueless when it comes to electronics! If i only plan on wiring the GPS and POSSIBLY another 12v down the road, would the 3 circuit solution suffice or do I definitely need the PC8? Right now I don't plan on getting additional lighting or heated gear.
 
#9 ·
You don't definitely need the PC-8. The three circuit solution would work, and if you later wanted to add a PC-8, you will have already installed the wiring and relay that you'd need for the PC-8. I like the PC-8 for the convenience; it makes for a very neat and orderly installation. This is what mine looked like under the seat on my old 2012 DL650:

 
#8 ·
An Eastern Beaver PC-8 is probably your best bet, unless you're going to go whole hog and buy one of those computerized power distribution blocks that don't use fuses and instead use electronic circuit breakers. Those are smaller than the PC-8, but way more expensive.

This is the page for the relevant parts for your bike: https://easternbeaver.com/Main/Bike_Specific/VStrom/vstrom.html

The PC-8 allows you to have different power options. You can make everything switched by running through a relay, or everything "always hot" by skipping the relay and running directly from the battery, or even a combination of the two; the PC-8 has the option of having two circuits always hot and the rest switched. The PC-8 gives you some flexibility, too; you might later decide to add other accessories like heated grips or additional power outlets, and the PC-8 has room for this expansion.

The nice thing about the PC-8 is that Eastern Beaver makes it plug and play. You don't need to splice wires or attach quick connects, and the instructions are pretty clear. I'm not an electronics guy at all, and I installed both the PC-8 and their headlight relay with no issues.

There are other power distribution blocks besides the PC-8; Blue Sea makes a nice one, as does CenTech. But for total ease of installation, I don't think you can go wrong with Eastern Beaver.

The simplest way is to wire the GPS mount directly to your battery with an in-line fuse, and that's fine if that's the only accessory you'll ever install. Installing a fuse block is kind of planning for the future. Keep in mind that there can be a parasitic drain from accessories attached directly to a battery, though, so if your bike sits for long periods of time with something like that hard wired to the battery, there's the potential for your battery draining.
 
#10 ·
My Zumo has a 0.02amp parasitic drain.

That is when directly hooked to the battery and no unit in the cradle it pulls a constant 0.02amps
 
#11 · (Edited)
The formula for determining how long it'll take parasitic drain to deplete 10% of the battery capacity is:

Time (hours)=0.10 x C1/lp C1 is the battery's rated capacity in amp/hours and lp is the parasitic drain in amperes.

If you have a 14 amp/hr motorcycle battery and a .02 amp parasitic draw, it'll take 70 hours to drain 10 percent of the battery's capacity. LOL, I know you didn't ask for this info, but I was curious so I checked the numbers. If someone left his bike sit for two weeks in between rides, he could lose about half the battery's capacity just from it sitting there with that minor amount of current drain. This is for AGM/lead acid batteries; I have no idea if it's the same for the lithium batteries.

It does make an argument for putting in some kind of switch or disconnect in a device with a parasitic drain when it's attached directly to a battery, if their bike sits a lot and they don't have it attached to a battery tender.

I'm no electrical wizard; I just happened to look this up a while back when I first learned about parasitic draw.
 
#12 ·
I don't think the draw is correct.

I have my bike for several weeks without the tender on. And no dead battery. The GPS mount for the Zumo powered up but GPS in the car.

..Tom
 
#13 ·
It wouldn't be dead, Tom, only decreased to about the 50 percent capacity mark after two weeks in a 14 amp/hr capacity battery. I don't know enough about batteries to say if a fifty percent battery would start a bike. If your battery has a higher capacity than 14 amp/hrs, then its 50 percent capacity would be greater, with a better chance of starting a bike.

If I'm not mistaken, the cradle for a Tom Tom has a built in transformer to step down the voltage from 12 volts to 5 volts. I don't think 20 milliamps sounds high for that.
 
#15 ·
That's entirely possible, Tom; I have no idea. I figured Rolex must have measured his with a multimeter to confirm the drain, and that's how he came up with the 20 milliamp number.

I get out of my element pretty quickly on electrics and electronics. The stuff I know is mainly specific to projects I've done for my bikes, and I'm no authority by anyone's metric. I use a Garmin Nuvi on my bike, which I plug into a USB power port that's wired into a 12V to 5V buck converter, which is in turn wired to my PC8.
 
#16 ·
It is a 0.02amps draw because of the 12v to 5v drop down, my bike rarely sits more than a week but it has sat for 6 weeks with no tender and problems starting up.


I'm still on the original 2014 battery.


I had my 2009 650 set up the same way and it still had the original battery when I passed the bike down to my younger brother in 2016/2017 ?
 
#17 ·
I’ve connected my TomTom 400 directly to the battery of my 1000 without any issues.

I do put the battery on trickle charge if I know I won’t be using to for a couple of weeks and also through Winter and I’ve noticed no issues.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
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