USB

Even though I now have a smarty pants phone with all the latest travel geegaws, we still use a Garmin Nuvi GPS in the car to navigate when traveling. In the Sonata, it is not an issue, but in the Miata the combination of the location of the cigarette lighter socket and the big stock GPS power plug make shifting into 3rd & 5th gear an adventure in knuckle banging.

Tiring of having to remember to shift into those gears with the flat of my hand in the Emperor I bought an accessory cigarette lighter plug and mounted it on the side of the console out of the way. This eliminated the shifting problem but the large GPS power plug was now an issue for the passenger because it stuck out into their already cramped foot well space. The perfect solution would to have a USB cable that powered the GPS, but…

Even though the Garmin GPS comes with a USB cable it could only be used to charge the unit or load new software or maps. The only way to get to use it for directions was to use the bulky 12V power plug. When I first starting looking for a USB cable that would actually charge the Garmin and allow you to navigate with it, they didn’t exist. I found a tutorial on how to modify a regular cable to make it work, but it involved cutting the cable apart, digging into one of the connector and soldering a jumper wire between two pins of the mini Type-B end. It was delicate operation that me, along with my dull x-acto knife & 40-year old soldering iron would not be able to do, so I gave up.

Fast forward to a week ago and I tried again to see if someone made a cable that would work off the self. This time my googlefu led me to 3BR Powersports, a small business that specializes in cables for the motorcyclist’s power needs, and had just the right product – Red Band GPS POWER CABLES.