On long journeys through unfamiliar territory I continue to use my Garmin Sat Nav in conjunction with the Niro one because I find the speed camera warnings on the Garmin more useful. It only warns if the speed camera is for your traffic direction, whereas the Niro one warns for them all. The Garmin one is also better and more accurate at displaying average speed cameras. For example on the M42 and other motorways where the gantry cameras have been replaced by average speed ones – the Niro unnecessarily warns at every gantry – even though speed cameras are no longer mounted there. The Garmin one warns on the approach to an average speed section and shows a red bar at the top of the screen throughout the average speed section as a constant reminder.
I have always mounted the Garmin Sat Nav in my cars on the dash board using a Garmin adhesive mounting disc. However – because the weight of the Sat Nav is beyond the disc periphery there is a permanent tug on the disc trying to peel it away from the dash – sooner or later it becomes detached. Mine came away this morning and when I arrived home I decided to do something about it - rather than just replace the double backed adhesive and re-attach it as I have done before.
I needed an adapter that extended forward of the Sat Nav to overcome the “tugging” problem. I had a rummage in the garage and found a strip of 1mm thick steel 5 cms wide. I cut off a 13 cm length, filed the corners round, removed the sharp edges and bent it by hand to match the curve of the dashboard. I then attached a Garmin mounting disc to the adapter using Araldite 2 pack epoxy. When it had set I masked the top surface of the mounting disc and painted the device with matt black paint.
I have never been able to find the high strength 3M adhesive pads for Garmin mounting discs – You can buy discs already with the 3M adhesive on the underside but they are expensive. Hence I have regularly used the smaller pads that are easily and cheaply obtained from Ebay for GoPro cameras – which I keep in stock. It takes 3 GoPro pads, trimmed to suit, to cover the whole of a Garmin disc. However, the new adapter only needs an adhesive pad at each end and a rectangular GoPro pad measures 4.5 x 3.5 cm so I attacked one to the underside of each end of the adapter and mounted it on the dash.
You can see from this side view that the Weight of the Sat Nav falls within the end of the adapter – thus overcoming the problem posed by using a Garmin disc alone.
The position chosen for mounting is ideal – it does not obstruct the windscreen and can be easily reached since it close to the steering wheel. This is the view I see of both Sat Navs when driving
It took me 3 hours altogether to make the gadget – mainly due to waiting for the epoxy to set and paint to dry. I have every confidence that this one is very unlikely to fall off.
