Originally Posted by "XYZ-Man"
"The low down on the gps battery's is....
The vibrations from the bikes motor causes the battery's to vibrate in the gps housing. The spots where the battery's touch each other (+ to -) will come apart slightly because of the vibrations. When that happens it sparks. That spark causes carbon arcing. With enough of that carbon arcing you will notice a little black spot on the ends of the battery and the metal pickups where the battery's touch. Because of that black spot the juice wont flow.
You can give the battery's a few twists to clean off the contacts and it will work for a while again.
But the best cure is to power it off the bikes power. As liquid said a KX and most MX bikes have no stator. Yep thats a problem.
If your bike has a stator you can get an inverter to convert the stator voltage to what the gps needs (either ac to dc i think)
www.cycoactive.com sells them for like $50.
If your bike has electric start you have a battery. You can wire the gps direct to the battery with an inline fuse. cycoactive sells those also.
But if you have no battery, stator, and dont want to buy a lighting coil (yes they are available for the kx check
www.electrexusa.com) There is still hope.
1. Dielectric grease is your friend. Lather all the electrical contacts with it.
2. If you have a gps like a e-trex where you have 4 battery's in pairs side by side with a big cover over them. What you can do is get some silicone and make little hershey kisses on the underside of the battery cover right over the battery's. When you put the cover on these little drops will help hold the battery's in place and keep them from vibrating.
3. My GPSv has the battery's sliding into a hole 2 deep so the silicone trick dont work for me. I take some black tape and tape the battery's end to end. Make sure that the battery's form a V when you tape them. So when you straighten them out it stretches the tape and holds that center connection tight. Kinda hard to explain.
So there ya go. A few tips for gps usage.
Oh I have a ram mount on mine that works awesome. Never had a single problem with it yet."