my 660 is a disaster!!

[Poucher]

Having nothing but trouble with my 660 at the moment.


When I start to navigate a route, after about 5 mins I loose the voice prompts altogether in my hard wired earphones, then if you scroll through a couple of screens it just locks up.

Then if you lift it out of the cradle on the bike, instead of getting the message about loosing power switching off in 20 secs etc, it just hangs and won't even turn off with the button.

When I take the battery out of it to re-boot it, the screen comes back on with just a faint "Garmin" logo and you can't switch it on or off, the only way it seems I can get it started again is to connect it to the mains charger in the house, after a couple of hours of this it will re-start again, but then it will go through this freezing malarkey as described above if I stick it back on the bike?

The even odder thing is that it will still work fine in the car holder, with the voice prompts coming direct from the speaker on the unit, but I get nothing but trouble when its in the bike holder?

I thought it was a problem with the cradle on my KTM, but I've just tried it this afternoon on my BMW as well and it does the same thing, by the time I've done 10 miles its locked up and useless!!

Its driving me nuts tbh, I can't think that both cradles on my bikes are faulty? the BMW one has only done about 10 - 12 k with the Garmin fitted.

I've tried everything, upgrades to 2014.1, factory re-sets, so I'm gonna contact Garmin and see if they can do an exchange on it or something, cos I've totally lost all faith in this useless thing.


Anybody had similar problems to this?

Anybody had problems with the bike cradles that would cause this?

Anybody exchanged their units?

How much?

Any contact details for Garmin exchanges?



Any ideas gratefully received Chaps,



Frustrated to hell, Poucher

 

[stever1]

Is it possible to do a reset ?. on our car tom-tom you can put a pin in through a small hole and it resets itself

 

[alanbmwgs]

Disaster !!!

Leave it with me, I'll have a quite word my Uncle Arthur !!!!

 

[chas820]

Anyone near you with a 660 that you could temporary swap for a trial?

 

[Poucher]

Are there any issues with micro sd memory cards?

Its got an 8gb Samsung hd micro sd card in it, should that be ok??

I once tried to put some music on it and that was a no-go as well because the music went a bit "pinky and perky" on me so I ended up deleting all that.

 

[tugboat]

Can you get a screen up to show the battery state. It sounds from the description as if the battery is only getting an intermittent supply from the cradles, then running low on power and thus the freeze up.
As it's happening on both bikes, it suggests a problem with the external contacts on the satnav. If it was the battery contacts inside I'm thinking you would lose the display altogether.

 

[Deleted account 181015003]

I exchanged one with garmin a few weeks ago £120 took about 4 days from posting to them

 

[Greg Masters]

Which firmware version are you using?

 

[Poucher]

Which firmware version are you using?

No idea Greg? how do you find that out??

I've just updated all the mapping to 2014.1 so I thought that would be it, bang up to date.

I went out for a quick spin last night to try it again, it hung again so I re-booted it by taking the battery out, but I also took out the micro sd card, fired it up and then switched it off and put the sd card back in.

After all that it navigated about 20 miles perfectly, voice prompts and everything, the trouble is that its not consistent, I could use it at the weekend again and it will start hanging.

I'm out on Friday so I'll see how it performs then, if it starts playing up again I'm giving up and sending it back to Garmin

 

[Greg Masters]

No idea Greg? how do you find that out??

• Tools
• Settings
• System
• About

Software Version is shown top right.

 

[Poucher]

software version 4.90

Does that sound right??

 

[alanbmwgs]

Disaster

software version 4.90

Does that sound right??

That's what mine says our Colin.

 

[ymfb]

I had similar problems, locking up for no reason. New battery and 95% of my problems are solved.

 

[Greg Masters]

software version 4.90

Does that sound right??

4.90 is the latest version. There were shutdown issue with earlier versions.

 

[Poucher]

Just to update you on this never ending saga........

I bought a "new" battery from Handtec, £30 by the time you added postage, anyhow it turned up in a jiffy bag, no invoice / paperwork, the battery was not shrink wrapped or anything and the build date on the battery was 09/23/09 --- Exactly the same date as on my old battery, this looks bloody dodgy to me???

Anyhow, I popped the battery in and it made not a jot of difference, in fact its bloody worse now, can only get it to say "Garmin" doesn't matter what I do to it

So, bollocks I thought, its going back, rang Garmin customer services on Friday and got a returns number, £120 to exchange it, so off it went.

I have no doubt its a good service by all the comments on here, but I'm a bit p1ssed off that an expensive ( £460 ) piece of kit like this only lasts 4 years It seems like most electrical items have a built in obsolescence period of about 4 years these days and then " Kaput!"

And we, like grateful fools think " Oh fantastic, its only going to cost me another £120 on top of the £460 it cost me to get it running again!"

Call me an old fashioned tight Northern Git ( just copy and paste it Al, save you typing it ) But it is too much to expect things to work and just keep working?? we all seem resigned to the fact that its only gonna work for a few years, but tipping more money up will get it going again..Grrrrrrr

And Garmin have such unshakeable confidence in their products, that when it comes back it will have a full 90 days warranty!
Not a year, or 6 months.........but 90 days, wow, I'm totally underwhelmed

Anyhow,, rant over,..... for now

 

[Poucher]

Quick update on this unit

Sent my unit away last Friday and got the replacement back by Wednesday of the following week, so a pretty quick turnaround indeed.

The replacement unit is a complete boxed kit ( Zumo, case, charger, bike mount, car mount, ram mounts, etc ) so its virtually like getting a brand new boxed 660 which makes the £120 replacement fee a bit easier to swallow.

The unit itself came back loaded with some 2012 version of the maps, so I updated it to 2014.10 but opted not to load the whole of Europe mapping, dropping out Scandinavia and a few others, I also deleted most of the foreign voices in order to help the unit recalculate faster.

Tested it out on Saturday afternoon and its seems to be working fine, nice to have the voices back inside my head!

I'm away this weekend coming for a quick overnighter to Castle Douglas, Dumfrieshire so let's hope it behaves itself and lets hope it lasts longer than the 90 day guarantee!!

 

[Bumpkin]

hope it lasts longer than the 90 day guarantee!!

Glad you're sorted. I've been running a white-box NOH 660 (what you normally get as a swap-out from Garmin) for a couple of years now, no problems to report.

Rumour has it that they are probably more thoroughly tested that the new ones.

 

[JoeC gs1150se]

I read on other posts on the site about people moaning bout garmin kit .. not being a sat nav user wouldn't know how valid the grumbling is . It could be a possible purchase in the near future so casting around for opinions etc. My neighbour - a HOG type person - has a zumo and swears by it (not at it ). Any opinions etc welcome.

 

[Wapping]

Well JoeC gs1150se of Wimborne Dorset, the OP of this thread started off very unhappy.... Then became very happy..... And Bumpkin, too..... What does that suggest to you, if you really had to guess?

 

[geotim]

Did he ever find his way home?