Can't power Zumo from 12v socket whilst in cradle

[mcfroyce44]

Having a problem which I'm hoping some of you have already solved. I've bought a Garmin Zumo 345LM and intend to only use it for longer (eg French) trips. Therefore,  rather than hardwire it,  I thought I'd put it in the cradle as needed and use a car 12v cigarette to mini USB cable to keep it charged whist riding. ( ie not use the hardwire cable at all). Means I can easily take off most of the Garmin and RAM mount stuff if leaving it parked. If I hardwire it then I have to leave the mount on the bike all the time inviting somebody to thieve it.I don't want to faff about with buying a locking kit. My RAM steering stem ball mount from my Blackbird fits the GTR1400 perfectly and I'm happy to leave it in place full time.
My problem is that Garmin have decided to put the USB socket in a place where it's mostly covered by the mount. This looks to be the same for all of the 3 series zumos.
I'm presuming my best approach is to buy a male cigarette plug and connect it to the Garmin cable but it's not going to be the most elegant looking thing with half a meter of cable,  voltage reducer and fuse holder all coiled up.
Any better ideas gratefully accepted.

[pross]

Hi .
Sorry I can't help mine is opposite to everything you don't want  .
Hard wired to the spare bullit connectors at the front left hand side of the tank and a locking waterproof cradle between the bars . Hope someone on here can help you 

[Robbieben]

You don't need a voltage reducer, wire the Garmin cable to a 12V plug and plug into your accessory socket. The Garmin works with a 12V input.

[mcfroyce44]

It's a newer Zumo which apparently runs on 5 volts.  The reducer is a small box like thingy on the supplied Garmin cable. The cable also has an inline fuse in a holder and is fairly bulky.
I previously used a car Garmin inside a waterproof case plugged into the mini USB port on the Satnav and a 12v cigarette socket I'd wired under the seat of my Blackbird. Worked perfectly for years.
I only bought the Zumo because it has the curvy roads option and the eBay seller advertised it in the wrong place. He put it under in-car technology/GPS instead of motorcycle accessories. The starting price was really low but nobody bid until I did with less than 10 seconds to go and practically stole it.

I'm going to see how much of the cradle I'd have to remove with a dremel to access the mini USB. It's probably only about half the diameter of a pencil. In attached photo,  the USB port is beside the bottom right hand screw.

Thanks for suggestions so far.

Edit.  I've ground off a bit of the rubber round the male USB connector on the cigarette lighter cable and managed to get it to plug in then the cradle will just about click into place. Will see if it all works.

[STX1300man]

Will it run via USB? I thought it only charged.

I looked at shortening the supplied cable, as I too wanted a fully removable plug in solution, but it is not straight forward.

I gave in and hard wired hiding the cable and power reducing box whee the accessory connectors are under the left side panel.

[Boomer]

Garmin have "special" cables so if you want to run it off a USB adapter you will need to buy a Garmin specific cable for it. They have a resistor between 2 of the pins which when plugged in the Garmin detects and puts itself in nav mode. Without the resistor it goes into "connected to a PC" mode.

[mcfroyce44]

Sorry for slow reply I was away over Christmas.
I managed to take off just enough material from the mini USB end of the cigarette lighter cable to get it to fit into the port on the rear of the Garmin. I tried it and it works fine - I can use the Satnav and the cable keeps it charged. Thinking about it logically,  this isn't surprising because that's how you'd use it in a car.
As you say,  if you connect it mini USB to USB it'll default to thinking its connected to a computer to update etc.
Happy New Year