Sat nav sucker issues

[Poly Hive]

Two things really.

First is if your sucker drops off then clean the window really well and also wash the sucker in washing up liquid and it will stick far better.

2nd is I asked "Honest John" who has a motoring column in the Telegraph about the sucker thing and he recommended a mat on the dash as he said it is actually illegal to have them mounted "in the sweep of the wipers". I assume he knows what he is talking about and so we bought a mat from Amazon, about £10, and were pleasantly surprised to receive two. Again when they get grubby the suction fails but a good soapy wash and they are good to stick like glue again.

PH

[Mr Larrington]

Emily attaches to what is basically a bag filled with lead shot, which sits on top of the dash and excites airport security types if you have it in your hand luggage.  How do I bring down a 747 with a bag of shotgun pellets?  Make the pilot eat it and wait?  If you are a member of the Troy Queef tendency or in one of the multi-storeys at Airwick Gatport it will occasionally slide around a bit, and she has once or twice taken to cowering in the passenger footwell on some of the twiddlier roads of the Sierra Nevada.

Nervous passengers are one thing but electronic nervous passengers are taking things a bit far.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

I got fed up with the thing falling off so I have bought a car with it installed in the dash.  Obviously when it needs updating the whole car will need to changed but my dealership assures me that won't be a problem.

[Poly Hive]

LOL our cure was £10 (and some Fairy Liquid) not £10k!

PH

[Feanor]

Our vehicle has a built-in GPS on the dashboard video screen.
I never use it.
I always use the Garmin stuck to the windscreen with a sucker.

Why?
Because to update the maps on the onboard unit is silly expensive, and not very recent.
Because I can't easily load waypoints, tracks, routes to it from my PC.
Because I can remove the Garmin and take it on holliberries with me and navigate in furrin parts with pre-planned routes and waypoints.

[Euan Uzami]

The fact it has an inbuilt sat nav was one of the deciding factors for buying my current car - it's great.

I can't be bothered keep taking it off and on again as it's a security risk - even if you leave a round mark on the windscreen that says to a thief "please smash me, there's probably a sat nav in the glove box".

I find there aren't enough new roads for it not updating to be an issue. Mine doesn't understand the new A46 but I know the way to everywhere along there so it doesn't matter. Also I usually don't care enough about which way I go enough to want to load a track onto it. However you can get ones that do update themselves, a friend has got one that downloads new data automatically using a GPRS thing in the windscreen. Also my brother's got one that has a button that puts you through to a call centre that can remotely program a destination into the satnav for you.
With a sucker it was usually a case of "can I be bothered to get it out of the glove box and stick it on - erm, no" , then later, "oh, damn I don't know the way - I wish I'd bothered to put it on". But with an inbuilt screen it's often enough just to look at the map without even needing to program anywhere in.

It's shite for traffic though - although I'm sceptical if any sat nav is actually any good for traffic... It sometimes knows that there is "an incident" ahead but that's useless 'cos it can't tell you how much it will affect you or even if it will still be there when you get there.

[Mr Larrington]

Emily doesn't see a lot of use except on holibobs; on one occasion she was woken up in Tampa and programmed with the address of the first night hotel.  She thought about it for a while.

"You are 1,823 miles from your destination and face a 27 hour drive to get there".  No, Emily, I am not still at the rental car return area at Denver airport.  Think before you say something stupid.

Hire car outfits charge an extortionate daily rate for TwatNav; a back of a fag packet calculation reckoned Emily would pay for herself in two years.  Garmin charge an eye-watering amount for map updates, though, so I don't bother.  This has so far only been a problem once, but the new road appeared to be going in the right direction and we did find the Oroville dam eventually.

How I managed to get across Salt Lake City using only a road atlas should be on "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World".  If they still made it.  And if he wasn't dead. And ["You're fired" - Ed.]

[Feanor]

I suppose it comes down to how you use the sat-nav, and what you expect it to do.

Hollibobs is one of the times my car Garmin gets the most use.

Amusingly, I tried to decline the Sat-Nav option at Denver last year, on account of having my own, pre-programmed with all my stuff.
But it was a 'free' option on my hire so I 'Had to take it, or I'd be charged for it when I returned the vehicle without it.'
It remained in the glove compartment for the duration.

I will have installed current maps for my destination, set up waypoints for my destinations, and checked the routes it will use.

I try to keep current with CN Europe and CN N.America.
I sometimes need to pick up some mapping for SE Asia.
And in Africa, I use ( and contribute to ) Tracks4Africa crowd-sourced maps, which contain the 'usual' routes and off-road tracks and sand-roads, as well as the Garmin mapping.

[mrcharly-YHT]

When I saw the title I assumed the thread would be about people blindly following satnav instructions.

[pcolbeck]

VW Group cars get free map updates for their inbuilt SatNavs. You just download form a website stick it on an SD card and the SatNav loads the update from that.
I was really annoyed when I finally gave in and decided I needed to update my old TomTom as the cost of the update was more than the cost of buying a new TomTom ! I chucked it in the end as I was about to buy a new car anyway.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Saw a neat idea today.

The satnav was part of the (extended width) rear view mirror, on the drivers side obviously. 

Fitted to a 57 plate so perhaps an aftermarket add-on? 

[pcolbeck]

Might be but a few new cars are starting to come with a SatNav repeater in the rear view mirror. Mines in teh dash but it also has an simple arrow and distance to turn indicator between the speedo and the rev counter which I find I use a lot.

[Wombat]

VW Group cars get free map updates for their inbuilt SatNavs. You just download form a website stick it on an SD card and the SatNav loads the update from that.
I was really annoyed when I finally gave in and decided I needed to update my old TomTom as the cost of the update was more than the cost of buying a new TomTom ! I chucked it in the end as I was about to buy a new car anyway.

Only some VW group vehicles, or maybe its those with a "fully integrated" rather than "dedicated to the vehicle, linked to its systems, but removable on a stalk" ones.  The Garmin thingy on my Skoda (which is also fitted to numerous VW and SEAT vehicles does not come with free map updates.  When the car is new I had a discount voucher, so it was "only" about £25 or so for 2 years worth, but Mrs W's identical Skoda is just over 2 years old, so we had to pay up a sum rather more than that for the update.  At least with the "de-stalkable" ones like ours all you have to do is bring it indoors and USB it to the PC. 

We still have a Tomtom, but now don't bother to update the maps as its a trifle superfluous now, but they were only ever about £60 or so for all of europe, in its widest possible interpretation.  I did also cough up for New Zealand maps for it, as that was cheaper than hiring a squitty little Tomtom in NZ for the campervan.  Mine is a nice big one with all the features such as music, and bluetooth integration.  Of course I get all that with my "PID" in the Skoda, including the extreme amusement that when it is reading out a text message, whern the sender has typed "LOL", it actually reads "laughs out loud".  I do find the Garmin quite frustrating to use, after several years with the Tomtom.

[Mr Larrington]

My VW Froup vehicle is so amazingly primitive that it still thinks digital watches are a pretty nifty idea doesn't have a built-in TwatNav.  I think it was buried in the options list between "llama carrier" and "thing for getting boy scouts out of horses' teeth".

[Wombat]

My understanding was that you could only get the llama carrier in conjunction with the sunroof, but alpacas are OK without.

Actually I think the last new vehicle I saw, that had a cassette player factory fitted was a Golf belonging to a colleague, who had paid about double what my modest Citroen with a CD player had cost.  They do seem a bit backward in some respects.  Come to think of it, Pascal's VW Transporter with its fancy removeable seats, two level air conditioning and more electronics than you can shake a stick at, has a cassette player, and its only 7 years old. The most notable amusing featureof the PID, is that it runs Windows...  Windows CE!  What were you thinking of, Garmin?

[Ningishzidda]

Get some wire coat hangers.
Make a fixture for the SatNav which utilises the air vent louvres in the dashboard centre.

Arrange it so the SatNav is below the level of the radio and CD player slot.
The SatNav will be 'out of sight' to passing motorists AND will not block your view through the windscreen ( which is illegal in California ).

Being flexible, mechanically adjust the coat hanger fixture so the SatNav is pointing at your face.



PS. Nice air freshner. Blocking the view through the screen, dooh!

[Mr Larrington]

Curious.  I have been stopped by the polis in California and they made no mention of the naughtiness of having Emily sitting atop the dash.  They were too busy trying to fit me up for nicking my own hire car - some light-fingered type had half-inched a black Colorado-registered Mustang convertible from outside a motel overnight.  Yes, I said, it's a fair cop.  As if the tea-leaf would be driving it openly down Main Street while in possession of long hair, a scruffy beard, an English accent and a glovebox full of paperwork WITH MY NAME ON IT

I do not know where the town of Hemet gets its coppers from.  Walmart's bins, probably.