Garmin 305 issues
I've had my 305 for one and a half years now, and it's begun an annoying habit of switching off whenever I go over a any poor road surfaces. As riding over such surfaces is unavoidable, it's rendering it completely useless. Has anyone else had this issue, and do they have any solutions
You live and learn. At any rate, you live
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1. Often you can overcome it by putting the unit in back pocket instead of on hard hitting bar or stem mount
2. You can improve it a bit but not fix it by opening the unit and bending the contacts up a bit more so tension is higher (but still need to carry in back pocket in my experience)
3. If you can solder in small circuit boards with tiny wires you can bypass the problem contacts with permanent wires and then reseal the unit - unit can be pried open with finger nails/knife.
Personally I'm still at phase 2 but the unit is in my pocket and looks rubbish with tape & elastic bands holding it together....I'll solder it soon once I get the right type of wires..!
Basically the pressure from the clamp and the holder holding it down seems to somehow push the internal contacts apart.
(I work in a company that lives off selling lowish and then making money from aftermarket sales & products - the business model is called 'razor-razor blade'..... or 'Garmin won't work outside warranty'
I found option 3 in Paul's post fixed it. If you do a search on google there is a good site that details exactly what to do. It is not actually that difficult, I am not brilliant with a soldering iron but I managed to sort mine out ok. You don't actually need any new wires, you can just use the existing wires from the battery, and hard wire them to the circuit board, so by passing the spring contacts. It seems very strange that Garmin used this sort of contact on something exposed to a lot of vibration.
If I get chance I will see if I can found the website with the details.
Mine is still held together with tape as I haven't got around to getting the right sort of glue!