How to wire a BMW Navigator II straight to your battery

If you're anything like me, you will appreciate the simplicity and fiscal sensibility of an older item - in this case it's a sat nav that gives a straight forward 2D map view of where you want to go, none of this 3D-can't-see-what's-coming-up silliness you get with any modern 'nav. BMW Navigator IIs (and their Garmin Streetpilot 2610 counterparts) can also be found on certain auction sites for around £50 if you look hard enough, which is bargainous by anyone's standard. Plus they're mega retro. There's just one problem - if you're one of the ~95% of people who don't have a BMW ready wired to take one of these units (such as a K1200RS) then you'll find it quite difficult to actually wire the bloody thing in. Here is how I did it, a culmination of a surprising amount of reading up on the subject..

Firstly, if you're really unlucky or misguided, you may have bought a unit without the power cable. Mine came with the cable chopped up to fit a Bosch power socket similar to a cigarette lighter socket but not quite, these are common fitment on BMW motorcycles for some reason. This was a problem because the wires in the power lead are aluminium (!) and the strands would work harden and break off under the screws over the course of a day. As you can imagine, stripping back the wires and reattaching them to the connector every morning became quite tiring. If you need a cable then I found mine on ebay under the title "GARMIN StreetPilot 2610,2620,2720,2820 GPS DATA BMW Amplifier Harness Kit Cable" but I think it also has the BMW part number "71 60 7 686 670". It also bears the code "320-00171-53" if that helps anyone..

So, that's step one out of the way. But there's a problem isn't there? You still can't connect it to the battery because this cable ends in a frankly bizarre connector that is special to BMW. It's a shame to chop this off and solder straight on to the wires because this connector is waterproof and it allows you to easily disconnect your GPS unit. So, there are a couple of ways to go with this - you can either buy the proper BMW connector block to fit the other side (BMW part number "611657 83300413586" available on ebay Germany for £26.67 at time of writing) or you can search for connector number 968402 and see what comes up - BMW also use this connector in their cars, as do JLR and maybe more. The only thing to watch for is where the "rib" on the top is located, there are clearly several versions of the 968402 and you need the one to fit your Garmin cable..

Mine came from a "3 series", whatever that is. They seem to be a popular connector for parking sensors, whatever those are. It was £10, still quite a lot for a chomped off bit of loom but better than the new prices!

With that you'll need to know which is +12v and which is negative, the Garmin cable is traditionally coloured with the red wire is live and the black wire as ground but a kind soul over on the advrider forum has made a lovely diagram:

Of course you're working with the right side of the diagram, I hope that was obvious..! They state that J2 Pin 1 is ground and J2 Pin 3 is +12v, which I can say is correct.

With a bit of wire stripping, twisting, soldering and heatshrinking done it was time to wire the Nav into a battery and hope that the people on advrider weren't lying to me..

Happily the wires out of the "3 series" block are also copper so hopefully it won't work harden and break off! This also somehow makes the BMW cradle work with the GPS unit, there is no extra work required. Happy Navigating!