GO730 dead?

[wmsimpson]

Having troubles with my GO730. It was showing a dim display in bright light but functioning normally otherwise, and then it died, whether connected or not to a charging cable. I tried pressing the reset button more than once but no joy.

Now that I'm home, I placed it in the charging cradle and it fired up and did an update. If I remove it from the cradle, it dies instantly and will not restart. Then it failed to start in the cradle. I hit the reset button, placed it in the cradle and now it's on again.

Any ideas what can be wrong? I would suspect the battery but it's new and had been giving great service until now.

 

[canderson]

but it's new

The 730 or the battery (assume the latter!)?

It sounds as though you've got a totally dead flat battery. These units actually run from battery power, while charging the battery when connected to an external power source. We've seen cases where the battery pulls down the charging circuit so severely that the unit finally ceases to power up.

Can you give a bit more history on how, when, why you replaced the battery? You don't say that you did, but "it's new" tends to make me think so.

 

[wmsimpson]

The battery was changed last year with a kit from Nu Power or some such place. The installation went fine and the unit performed better than ever with the new battery. I changed it because battery life on the old one had grown very short.

But wait, my GO appears to have come back to life! After leaving it in the cradle overnight, it appears to be back to normal and the battery now shows fully charged. The only thing I can figure is although the unit was plugged in, it may not have been plugged in enough and it ran on internal battery until it was drained completely to the point that it couldn't turn on at all. There's nothing wrong with the charging cable, a new one with a traffic receiver inline which, BTW, works great.

Well that's embarrassing. Even after 5 years and hundreds of sorties, I'm still capable of "operator error".

 

[canderson]

I should have asked whether the little green light was lit on the front. Sounds as though perhaps it wasn't.

 

[wmsimpson]

I should have asked whether the little green light was lit on the front. Sounds as though perhaps it wasn't.

Hard to remember now. I was leading a group of cars on a club drive and the unit crapped out while we were at a photo op. Here we are at Stone Mountain Overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway. That's me on the far right. (photo credit Randy Tess)

Anyway, the light on the power cord was on or I would have noticed it. The light on the GO would have been on when the unit was up, so nothing unusual there. Once dead, the unit wouldn't start even with the "on/charge" light on. To see if the unit was actually charging, you would have to bring up the route map and look at the battery icon. I plugged the charger in repeatedly but did not let it sit a while to charge. I had route instructions and a navigator so we just carried on.

There doesn't appear to be anything wrong with the charger, either. I used it with my backup TT, an XL IQ Routes edition on the way home and the pair worked flawlessly on a 550 mile drive. I guess it's just a bizarre occurrence, and hopefully an isolated one.