Car sat nav.

Just a heads up to those who use car sat navs in their trucks, and looking for a replacement.
My sat nav was playing up so went looking for a new one.
Got a Tom Tom Start 52 delivered, tried it at home by putting a post code in, it would not direct me by postcode only as my last one did, but instead asked for a street/road name.
Thats all OK if you deliver to towns and cities, but totally useless for rural deliveries and remote farms.
Went on the TT reviews and there were quite a few saying it was useless for use in the countryside…why tf would they spec it like that?

Went back to Halfords, told the guy it was unfit for purpose for me, and after him unsuccessfully trying to sell me a 300 quid truck jobbie for half an hour (whilst not understanding why I would not buy one, and looking at me as if I was thick )…I ended up buying a TomTom VIA Western Europe for 99quid, the Mrs had 30 quid worth of vouchers, so result.

So …if anybody is thinking of changing be aware that the TT start 42 52 and 62 are all the same in that respect, so go for the VIA.
Cheers.
Btw my old sat nav is either just a bad power connection, or a knackered battery, does anybody know where you can get them fixed, …a truckstop or somewhere like they used to fix CBs.

There are lots of mobile phone repair places, call and ask if they would have a look at it, laptop repair shops usually charge a bit more than phone repairers, a sat nav is similar sort of technology .

Buckstones:
There are lots of mobile phone repair places, call and ask if they would have a look at it, laptop repair shops usually charge a bit more than phone repairers, a sat nav is similar sort of technology .

I actually did go to a little phone shop in Ediburgh the other day,.guy said it was special tooling,.and showed me the tiny bolt behind the windscreen mount bracket which was like a very tiny star socket (not the torque type).

Most Tomtom case screws are standard Torx heads - albeit some of them in very small sizes such as T3. There’s nothing special about them other than the size. I don’t think they use the “security” versions (with a raised pin in the centre, requiring a matching hole in the driver point).

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Roymondo:
Most Tomtom case screws are standard Torx heads - albeit some of them in very small sizes such as T3. There’s nothing special about them other than the size. I don’t think they use the “security” versions (with a raised pin in the centre, requiring a matching hole in the driver point).

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Cheers mate, I just took his word for it.
I’ll get my lad on the case, I’m sure he’ll have the kit for it.

I’d have just used my phone and Google Maps. Advantage of that is it’s even better than using postcodes for rural deliveries as in most places you can just put in the name of the business or farm you’re going to and it’ll take you there and if it comes to it you can pop in GPS co-ordinates.

Conor:
I’d have just used my phone and Google Maps. Advantage of that is it’s even better than using postcodes for rural deliveries as in most places you can just put in the name of the business or farm you’re going to and it’ll take you there and if it comes to it you can pop in GPS co-ordinates.

Very true…, just got used to using a sat nav for lat few miles to the farms.

I used one from Cmnav it works perfect. Its programmed for trucks. Check his site out. Updates are free also.

robroy:
those who use car sat navs in their trucks

I heard dvsa issue fines if you use a car sat nav.
So I heard on a cpc course anyway. Guy on there knew a guy who knew a guy who had ben fined 2 weeks wages for using a car sat nav

The-Snowman:

robroy:
those who use car sat navs in their trucks

0

I heard dvsa issue fines if you use a car sat nav.
So I heard on a cpc course anyway. Guy on there knew a guy who knew a guy who had ben fined 2 weeks wages for using a car sat nav

I also heard nights out were becoming compulsory…so stuff you!

For those awkward places that just have a postcode and a named farm/house/business whatever, I use a great little app called DelM8
I tried the month trial while I was on for John Lewis, worked beautifully, saved a lot of time on some of those jobs.
Bought it, use it nearly every day on this job.

Basically, you enter a postcode and it lists everything in that postcode area, houses with number, with just names, businesses, then it pops open Google maps and takes you right to the door.
No, I’m not on commission .
Just a great little app.

Here’s a question…
As I said my battery may be dodgy in the old unit.
Does it actually damage the batt or lessen it’s life expectancy by having them on constant charge, rather than remove the charger when batt is fully charged up.
(If that is a bloody stupid question please forgive me )

robroy:
Here’s a question…
As I said my battery may be dodgy in the old unit.
Does it actually damage the batt or lessen it’s life expectancy by having them on constant charge, rather than remove the charger when batt is fully charged up.
(If that is a bloody stupid question please forgive me )

Keep it on power all the time. Back when we had NiCad rechargeable batteries or earlier, there would be an argument to let it run flat and re-charge now and again. Nimh and now lithium batteries have little no no ‘memory effect’.

I did once have a halfords 2 cig lighter adaptor with one or two USB ports in the middle. My iphone at the time wouldn’t charge from the USB but tomtom would. At the time Amazon were giving out a tomtom with your pda each day so used to find them getting really hot during the shift. Eventually turned out the USB port was dodgy and didn’t give out a steady 5v.

njl:

robroy:
Here’s a question…
As I said my battery may be dodgy in the old unit.
Does it actually damage the batt or lessen it’s life expectancy by having them on constant charge, rather than remove the charger when batt is fully charged up.
(If that is a bloody stupid question please forgive me )

Keep it on power all the time. Back when we had NiCad rechargeable batteries or earlier, there would be an argument to let it run flat and re-charge now and again. Nimh and now lithium batteries have little no no ‘memory effect’.

I did once have a halfords 2 cig lighter adaptor with one or two USB ports in the middle. My iphone at the time wouldn’t charge from the USB but tomtom would. At the time Amazon were giving out a tomtom with your pda each day so used to find them getting really hot during the shift. Eventually turned out the USB port was dodgy and didn’t give out a steady 5v.

Thanks for that mate, I did wonder if it was my fault the thing went a bit iffy.

steviespain:
For those awkward places that just have a postcode and a named farm/house/business whatever, I use a great little app called DelM8
I tried the month trial while I was on for John Lewis, worked beautifully, saved a lot of time on some of those jobs.
Bought it, use it nearly every day on this job.

Basically, you enter a postcode and it lists everything in that postcode area, houses with number, with just names, businesses, then it pops open Google maps and takes you right to the door.
No, I’m not on commission .
Just a great little app.

So how much does it cost ?

robroy:

njl:

robroy:
Here’s a question…
As I said my battery may be dodgy in the old unit.
Does it actually damage the batt or lessen it’s life expectancy by having them on constant charge, rather than remove the charger when batt is fully charged up.
(If that is a bloody stupid question please forgive me [emoji38] )

Keep it on power all the time. Back when we had NiCad rechargeable batteries or earlier, there would be an argument to let it run flat and re-charge now and again. Nimh and now lithium batteries have little no no ‘memory effect’.

I did once have a halfords 2 cig lighter adaptor with one or two USB ports in the middle. My iphone at the time wouldn’t charge from the USB but tomtom would. At the time Amazon were giving out a tomtom with your pda each day so used to find them getting really hot during the shift. Eventually turned out the USB port was dodgy and didn’t give out a steady 5v.

Thanks for that mate, I did wonder if it was my fault the thing went a bit iffy.

Tis your magnetic personality affecting it, mate.
.
.
Either that or the new 5G phone masts are reacting with the gremlins that operate the internal telex machine in it.

Regarding battery - they usually only have a small battery so you need to keep it connected and are designed for that purpose. Batteries do slowly degrade however just like phones, so will eventually just stop charging. Plus the other electronics break.

Replacing them is possible, but could be expensive vs the cost of a new one. If you do, make sure its a genuine battery not AN-other from Ebay if you don’t want it overheating (even if its just NiCad).

The Start range are the ultra cheap ones, pretty much useless for most purposes. Don’t know why they make them as it has to do more damage to their reputation.

trevHCS:
Regarding battery - they usually only have a small battery so you need to keep it connected and are designed for that purpose. Batteries do slowly degrade however just like phones, so will eventually just stop charging. Plus the other electronics break.

Replacing them is possible, but could be expensive vs the cost of a new one. If you do, make sure its a genuine battery not AN-other from Ebay if you don’t want it overheating (even if its just NiCad).

The Start range are the ultra cheap ones, pretty much useless for most purposes. Don’t know why they make them as it has to do more damage to their reputation.

Just found a firm on’t tinternet that sells the battery and the tool kit…Subtel.

I can’t believe that TomTom hasn’t sorted this out yet. I had the same issue and I thought I will hang on to it and it will get sorted out on the next downloadable software update. To be fair the satnav is good enough for streets that actually have a name and the maps are up to date, but any “unnamed roads” don’t work. The stupid thing is that the satnav recognises the postcode as valid but just can’t navigate to it.

Ever since then I have had to carry my old satnav as well for the occasions I get an address the new one won’t navigate to.

You could potentially get the latitude / longitude from google and enter that in the satnav, but a bit tedious and a waste of time.

It can’t be that difficult for the developers at TomTom to sort it out. Poor.

The-Snowman:

robroy:
those who use car sat navs in their trucks

0

I heard dvsa issue fines if you use a car sat nav.
So I heard on a cpc course anyway. Guy on there knew a guy who knew a guy who had ben fined 2 weeks wages for using a car sat nav

Not sure if it’s been considered for law or not, but councils were certainly throwing the idea around a couple of years ago. Don’t know if it would be something checked on a roadside stop, more of another stick to beat you with if you’ve just peeled the roof off a trailer.

What I would like to know, if we have to use these, will councils be held responsible for ensuring the correct and up to date weight limit information is sent to the manufacturer, along with a list of narrow roads? This works both ways…hgv sat nav are far from perfect with their routing and still require common sense from the driver. And ultimately, if the driver hasn’t checked his height/set the height indicator before setting off, what makes you think they’ll set it in the sat nav?!

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