Zumo 340LM Routing

Joe Bar

Too old to die young.
UKGSer Subscriber
Joined
Mar 28, 2006
Messages
528
Reaction score
14
Location
Not far away.
I have two Zumo 340LM's, and no matter whether I use car or motorcycle mode or which avoidances I have set or not, they seem to take me down every shitty rat run in the world. It's almost as if the fastest route option doesn't function and it always takes the shortest route even if it's up someone's garden path. Both units have the latest updates, have been factory re-set and had the maps re-installed on Garmin's advice rather than just updated. But they both do exactly the same, as does a mate's 340.

From past experience I've come to expect the odd 'scenic diversion' from Mr Garmin, but of the several Garmin's I've had this is by far the worst. Even on a direct A to B route on familiar roads it will take you the most convoluted option available on occasions, while you run parallel to a perfectly serviceable, direct route dual carriageway.

Anyone else experienced this or have a solution?
 
does it have the curvy road feature if so disable it and ensure avoid highways is unticked, also does this happen when you have plotted a route in basecamp/mapsource and sent it to the unit or only when asking the unit to plot a route, when asking the nav to take you from A to B have you then looked at the route closley to see what way it is taking you, and then altered the preferences to see if the route the takes a different way.
 
Like Lee, I can only assume that it is down to the Preference settings.

Await response to Lee's very good questions.
 
I specifically bought the 340LM because it doesn't have the curvy roads feature, as I wanted a pretty basic unit because I generally plot all my own routes for longer trips.

As per my original statement, it does not matter whether I run it in motorcycle mode or car mode, or what avoidances I have set, I have tried them all. The only avoidances currently set in both modes are U Turns and Off Road.

Here is an example of just how crap it is, as you're in Derby Lee you may well know the roads. Arriving at the A50 after leaving Ashbourne on the A515, the Zumo 340 totally ignores the dual carriageway A50 direct to Swarestone and instead directs you through Sudbury, Scropton, Hilton, Willington and Barrow on Trent before arriving at Swarkestone.

La3507.jpg


Now, on a bike that's a nice ride, but if you're just trying to get home it's a pain in the arse. On a recent trip to Wales where there are numerous little farm tracks and single lane roads, it found every single one of them, diverting you off decent flowing A & B roads and onto hedge lined, over grown, gravel strewn tracks time and time again.

Both of my units do the same thing and this week coming back from Yorkshire with some mates, we ended up coming out through Ashbourne and on towards home, and not one of the three Zumo 340's we had would take the most obvious A515 / A50 route. All of them wanted us to leave the A515 and go cross country through Boylestone, Church Broughton, etc, on minor country lanes that are not even numbered B roads. Then after ignoring all the directions to turn off the A515, we arrived at the A50 as on the map above, and it still would not take us onto the dual carriageway home.

For this run, my sat nav was set for fastest route, in motorcycle mode, with only U turns and Off Road avoided.
 
As you have two 350LM's and your mate has one and they all do the same thing each time, with no onerous preferences set, it can only be the device.

If nothing better comes up by way of a fix:

Sell and get something else or, if within warranty, demand your money back from the retailer as not fit for purpose.
 
They're out of warranty, and I have considered buying TomToms. But, before doing that and incurring a lot of expense (two new units and 3 extra bike mounts) I was trying to see if others had experienced similar issues and had found a work around.
 
I use a Zumo 350 LM, which I would assume to be much the same device but with all of Europe rather than some of it. Firing it up it claims to be in motorcycle mode, with calculation set to Faster Time, Off-Route Recalculation is on (my personal preference, not all use it) Avoidances are Car Share Lanes and Unpaved Roads, no Custom Avoidances, Safe Mode on although it makes no difference to routing and GPS Simulator Off. That's all the settings I can find. It followed perfectly a 400-mile route planned in BaseCamp recently, the route involving A-roads, motorways and urban traffic. I've no explanation for the slow route posted but a couple of years ago in the same area I found myself on a ten-mile detour down cart tracks because I'd ticked Avoid Motorways and the device mistook a roundabout over the M1 for the M1 itself.
 
Thanks for taking the time to check your unit Bear. The 340 and 350 are almost identical, my mate has one and I can't see any obvious differences in how they function. I generally leave motorways allowed in car and bike modes, and plot waypoints in the route to keep me off them unless I need them.
 
From what it says in post #4 - and you are very sure that you and your friend have not somehow inadvertently selected 'avoid all main roads' or something similar - it would seem that the three (your two and the other one) dedicated to bikers devices are set by default from the manufacturer to some sort of 'Avoid all main roads, favour goat tracks and take me all around the countryside' preference, as apparently favoured by some bikermates if some correspondents to UKGSer are to be believed.

Unless there is some way of switching off the understandably annoying factory set preference or altering it, it would seem that you are stuck with it.

1. Contact Garmin to see if this is the case and / or seek their advice as to whether it is possible to alter the factory default setting

2. If it's not possible to alter the factory default setting - and you can't live with them as they are - sell the devices. Describe them in your advert just as Garmin do in their blurb; a motorbike rider will doubtless snap them up
 
Sorry for the late response, Does the 340 when asked to plot a route not give you the option of preview routes, in other words it gives you a choice. also do you have the Using the myTrends™ feature enabled,
Please be aware i do not own one of these units so i am going on what i am reading in the manual,and from experience (memory of setting these up for friends when on tour),
Could you also confirm if the problem arises when following a route created with basecamp/mapsource, does the route recalculate when sent, is the route the same as the route plotted when viewed on the unit.
Or You could try a hard reset, to do this press the bottom right of the screen while turning on and hold till the screen flashes then release and let it start and then follow the setup afterwards connect to express to ensure all updates are present
Or
You are not a million miles from where i am i could take a look to suit.
 
Sorry for the late response, Does the 340 when asked to plot a route not give you the option of preview routes, in other words it gives you a choice. also do you have the Using the myTrends™ feature enabled,
Please be aware i do not own one of these units so i am going on what i am reading in the manual,and from experience (memory of setting these up for friends when on tour),
Could you also confirm if the problem arises when following a route created with basecamp/mapsource, does the route recalculate when sent, is the route the same as the route plotted when viewed on the unit.
Or You could try a hard reset, to do this press the bottom right of the screen while turning on and hold till the screen flashes then release and let it start and then follow the setup afterwards connect to express to ensure all updates are present
Or
You are not a million miles from where i am i could take a look to suit.

I've done restore to default settings, and hard reset. On Garmin's recommendation I've re-installed the maps and all the updates are installed. I've checked and double checked avoidances and settings. The Traffic Trends feature is turned off, and I also clear the travel history after any long trip which Travel Trends uses for it's predictions.

I generally use MotoGoLoco for route planning and put in mumerous waypoints to try and prevent Mr Garmin from taking me away from my preferred route. MotoGoLoco which uses Google Maps generally predicts the most obvious route which looks pretty logical on the screen. But, more often than not Mr Garmin will beg to differ if there's a shitty alternative available, and in place like Wales there is usually a handy farm track near every good A road he'd prefer to use.

I'm just back from the Yorkshire Dales, North Pennines and the Lakes, and I went to great lengths to add plenty of waypoints and everything ran fairly smoothly, but closer to home where I know the roads I don't add in extra waypoints and you can see that the Zumo just wants you to divert down lanes that simply aren't the quickest / most obvious route, as in the pictures I posted above, so it does start to diminish trust in the unit.

I'm just of for a 300 mile trip to Hampshire and back with my wife, so it'll be interesting to see how we fare this time out.
 
That might well be a good suggestion, Lee.

If I ask my most recent Garmin devices to take me from A to B they will create a route according to my preferences. Sometimes they will (according to whether an an alternative option of roads to take is even realistically possible) offer me the choice of an alternative, too. I can review both routes and then make my choice as to which to take.

According to the manual at least, the 340LM device does have the ability to offer up alternative route suggestions:

https://www.manualslib.com/products/Garmin-Zumo-340lm-2641498.html

The manual then goes on about its ability to do 'Trending' which seems to be some sort of clever ability to remember that the owner likes to take certain sorts of roads. I haven't read it all but it might strike me as an annoying feature if the owner forgot about it.

In post #4 there is no mention of the device offering up an alternative that takes the main road (fastest and most direct, logically) the only option being the longer / slower but twistier route. One might guess that a basic GPS device, stripped by Garmin of all its bells and whistles and designed 'For bikers' might have the avoidance of all main roads as a pre-set default, though the novelty of that might wear off pretty soon. Logically, we can guess that Garmin are not that stupid. Another possibility is that in stripping away all its powers, Garmin assumed that the owners would, more often than not, be plotting their own routes, rather than relying on a dumbed down GPS device to do it for them. The novelty of that assumption would pretty soon founder on the rocks of reality.

There doesn't seem to be oceans of comment on the World Wide Web, where bods are flagging up the same issue with the 340LM device; or at least none that I can find from a very quick look. That might seem odd perhaps, given that it's an annoying problem that has afflicted no less than three devices, two of which are owned by one person and the third by a close friend. If human error is (as we are assured) ruled-out, that can only leave a fundamental problem within these three devices' route plotting itself; something that would seem unlikely.
 
I generally use MotoGoLoco for route planning and put in mumerous waypoints to try and prevent Mr Garmin from taking me away from my preferred route. MotoGoLoco which uses Google Maps generally predicts the most obvious route which looks pretty logical on the screen. But, more often than not Mr Garmin will beg to differ if there's a shitty alternative available, and in place like Wales there is usually a handy farm track near every good A road he'd prefer to use.

I am not sure that I concur with MotoGoLoco being the nirvana of route creation and, more importantly, its successful integration of the route into Garmin devices' software. Many of the posts we see on this site are around problems created because owners have used third party software (like MotoGoLoco) and not used Mapsource or BaseCamp. MotoGoLoco themselves seem remarkably reluctant to assist owners of Garmin devices who encounter problems. I am not sure why, not least as a significant part of their sales pitch is based on the third party's route creation software's ability to integrate seamlessly with Garmin's own.

Anyway, we digress. The OP's problem is all about crappy routes being created from within no less than three ostensibly identical devices, not crappy routes being created in third party software.
 
I find the fact that you have 2 units displaying the same/similar issue along with your friends most strange, having googled this and drawn pretty much a blank, and would have expected to find others with if not the same but similar issues even stranger, you coment that generally you do not use mapsource/basecamp,the reason i asked this was because if you use the recomended preference settings with either mapsource or basecamp and you send the route to the unit and it has the same preferences enabled it should in theory (providing the maps are the same aswell), not ask you to recalculate and just import as is, if it does ask to recalculate or indeed change the route somehow i would be looking at a difference somewhere in preferences/settings that you have missed or not realised they affect the route, or if 100% certain that its not this i would be thinking the unit is faulty and giving garmin tech a call to confirm this by arranging to send them back, warranty or not.

The preferences and settings i would use in mapsource/basecamp just to test would be
Basecamp
Motorcycling
faster time
unpaved roads
narrow trails

Mapsource
use autorouting
unpaved roads
faster time
slider 4th segment
 
Years ago, (Quest era) you used to be able to set speed limits for the different types of road. This was a useful way of discriminating, against for example, motorways ( just set them to a silly slow speed) and the fastest route would tend to result in directing you to avoid them.

I dont know the model you are having problems with, but could something like this be happening with the software you're using?
 
As Wapping has said and mirrors my opinion of other pieces of none garmin software, in the WRONG hands can and do cause more trouble, problems and time wasting, than it would take to learn to use the garmin software
 
I find the fact that you have 2 units displaying the same/similar issue along with your friends most strange, having googled this and drawn pretty much a blank, and would have expected to find others with if not the same but similar issues

Snap.
 
I wondered if the Motorcycle routing criteria tried to avoid main roads but asking my Zumo 350 to take me from Beartown to Kegworth the quickest route is mostly along the A50, which is what I would expect. It also offers me a route through Leek and Ashbourne over the hills which would be a more pleasant ride but even that uses the A50 for a few miles. The user manual that Wapping posted a link to isn't quite the same as the one I use which comes from http://static.garmin.com/pumac/zumo_3x0_OM_WEB_EN.pdf
 
Last edited:
My 345LM gives me the option of 3 different routes to select from (had to turn "Route Preview" on).

Have you tried it in "Car Mode" to see if that'll make a difference? Mine tried taking me all over the place once when I was in a minibus & I'd left it in bike mode, but generally it's OK (sliders for curves & hills set low until I actually need them).

D
 
I have this issue too.
The only workaround I have discovered is to only use it if I have planned a route in Mapsource and put in plenty of waypoints to keep me on faster main roads. I have learned to never ever just put a destination directly into the machine. It is particularly bad in Wales where there are plenty of narrow twisting roads with a notional 60 mph speed limit that are invariably chosen rather than a major road that might be 100 yards longer on paper but much faster in real life.
I contacted Garmin and suggested that they add "Unclassified roads" to the list of avoidances. Not holding my breath. But it would be a useful change.
 


Back
Top Bottom