The Garmin Montana 700 series is a great GPS, although many of our customers have been less than impressed with a couple of problems, worn contacts and intermittent shutdowns have been common.
My memory might be a little hazy, but I'm pretty sure I started using the powered rugged AMPS Mounts around 2011, and I've never had any of the problems others have reported, and in that time, I've installed and used quite a few.
No worn contacts on the GPS, I've never had the contact pins fall out of the cradle or wiring troubles, I think the reason is that I've always paid a lot of attention to supporting the harness and most of the time the devices have been mounted on the bars, so there's an element of vibration damping already, along with the angle better supporting the unit.
Most of the failures I've seen have been from tower mounted GPS setups, obviously there's just more vibration being transferred due to the mount being bolted to a tower or dash that is directly bolted to the headset or frame, with little or no attention to isolating the vibrations other than relying on the 4 small rubbers on the AMPS mount itself.
The initial set up on the current DesertX followed the same installation as the previous bikes, the GPS mounted to the bars, and it was, just as before... faultless.
As soon as the new GPS Mount arrived, I moved the GPS above the dash, knowing I'd get back to 'soft mounting' the cradle after the next tour....well, that only lasted a couple of days until I experienced what others had, intermittent shutdowns/restarts and inconsistent power supply.
It's not rocket science, vibration is the enemy.
I've also seen many frustrated owners now charging their 700 series GPS via the USB port, because their 2nd or even 3rd cradle has failed, or the contacts on the GPS are pitted beyond being useable.
Left: 60,000kms bar mounted. Right: Tower mounted after a couple of days.
The device (on right) has since been replaced too.
Now there's also another side to this, Portrait vs Landscape.
The 700 series is quite a bit bigger and around 35% heavier than the previous Montana, so it lends itself to placing more pressure on the contacts, therefore increasing the wear.
This of course isn't as much of an issue when mounted on the bars, as the angle means it's not just supported on the bottom, and almost non existent when mounted in portrait, even on a tower.
Another couple of calls to Garmin and it appears they've now addressed this problem with a new damper kit.
The difference is easy to see, new larger damper on right.
The good news, it seems to have worked and the mount is noticeably better. Time will tell !
Contact Garmin or your local reseller and get yourself the upgraded damper kit, it might just keep the vibrations from ruining your GPS.
