GeoW97

Santa saw fit to grace me with a Garmin Nuvi 350, which I love to death. I must have been at least an adequate boy. But I'd love to figure out a way to run that damn dangling power cable up under the dash and through the vent on the top of the dashboard as a sort of permanent installation. Is this a crazy idea, or is it possible?

Buff-Daddy

Cable is perfect length if you want your unit to sit in the lower left corner of your window. All you have to do is run out of outlet down towards passanger side foot well. Run behind center console (a little tricky, used cut wire coat hanger coated with electrical tape. Pulled the small end through and then used wire ties to keep wire from dangling down into drivers foot well. Run up the side of the door by where fuses are (you can push the wire back into the crease to make it invisable and well protected). Wire comes out by the front left window pillar and has about an extra inch to spare for movement. I will post pics when I have a chance. The only cable you see is the 18" running from the outlet down the passenger side foot well. I am sure you could run it back through the ashtray, but I didn't want to dig that deep into it with the time I had available. Maybe soon...

SNAFU 4

I bought a double outlet and hard wired it into the fuse box. I then mounted it in the area under the dash for the owner's manual. I wired my XM into that (no wires showing at all), and use the extra if I am on the road and have extra electronics (I usually have my cell charging up front, laptop charging plugged into the back outlet, and have the extra for my treo).

Buff-Daddy

I would be interested to see pics of that as well as how to hard wire to fuse box.

SouthboroAudiGuy

...to run the cable from the GPS to the windshield, along the base of it (it will tuck in rather nicely), and then along the left side, coming out around the fuse box. I did that with the hardwire for my radar detector. Thought about trying to get it through the dash, vent, & such, but opted to go this route when I saw how easy it was.

Good luck.

Buff-Daddy

I have read a lot of posts that say the Nuvi 350 is difficult to hardwire. I haven't tried yet.

thomas1978

GPS, mkay ;o)

GDawgA4

plug in the cig power adapter for it. Because its the USB style plug, voltages are different and you can't directly wire it into the fuse box.

I bought a 12v socket from radioshack hardwired it in. Pretty simple. I have the Nuvi 350 too. Like Southboro said, have the wire come up from the a pillar and stick it in the bottom left corner of the windshield.

Buff-Daddy

I need to learn how to hardwire, never done it before or even seen it done before.

meq123

... presupposing you are using the side socket on the Nuvi. The cig lighter supply that comes with the unit has special electronics to 'tell' the Nuvi that it's being powered (only) and not being connected to a PC.

However, if you are just wiring into the mount socket at the back, then any (decent) 5v supply will do.

If you DO use the supplied cig light power, the easiest thing to do is open it up and solder wires to the 12v pads on the circuit board (where the cigarette lighter contacts attach) and then run those wires to your fuse/relay panel. If you can't solder, you might be able to get a decent enough connection by twisting bare wires around the contacts inside the power supply case, but probably not recommended.