The smooth operator voice never shouts, or scolds as you miss turnings or didnt quite listen to what they had to say! And then one day.............
The screen goes dead.
With a Tom Tom there is only one button you can push and hold. A moments flicker of the screen and then that is that. After 2 happy years of travel you came to trust your Tom Tom. Now with a critical meeting to get to what do you do? A quick stop off at the local shop and purchase a new model? Thats what I had to do.
Stuck half way on my journey with no map or detail on how to get to my client all I could think to do for speed is to drop into a car showroom and buy a new model.
Crisis over and once home the obvious had happened. The internal rechargeable battery had died a sudden unexpected (and untimely) death.
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1) Very weird so that no screwdriver will fit
2) Very tight so even if you lash-up a makeshift tool then your hands bleed.
I had to modify a jewel screwdriver. The small size that fitted just bent. So I had to get the bigger oversized jewel screwdriver and grind down the point with an angle grinder.
On the back and under the rubber bars you will find the screws. Please note that you will need the strength of Sampson to get the little buggers to turn. So tightly are these grub screws bored into the frame that you can expect some tears. This is my home made screwdriver doing its bit.

















































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I simply took the second battery out, snipped the red, black and white wires as close to the batterry as possible. Discard the battery. I then drilled a small hole in the case and passed the three wires through the hole and rea-assembled the sat nav. Next step is to take the tomtom car charger and snip the connector from the end. Again you'll have three wires, red, white and black. Join red/red, black/black, white/white. How you joing them is your choice, i used the power conecctors used for hard drives in desk top pc's. They have four pins and it means you can dis-connect it for easier storage etc.
Don't be afraid to do this if you aren't bothered about having your sat nav for walking, cycling etc. It is easy and works very well.
It worked brilliantly but 1 further problem exists____
When I fired up the SAT NAV it did not accept my SD card with all the mapping on it.So even though I've replaced the battery and it fires up good an icon comes up with an X thro the sd card , so I take it out.
Then the tom tom comes up with an icon to put the sd card in [which I do] but same thing above happens.
Do you think with the power down of the old battery we have to reset Factory settings some how or encrypt the sd card some how.
Nobody has mentioned this.
Has anybody else had this problem??????
If I buy a new sd card the tom tom 510 will the machine accept it????
Regards,
Phil e-mail: pjt262@o2.co.uk
These kits have almost every bit in them you'll ever need for electronics, door hardware, a million uses, etc...
As an example http://www.hobbytool.com/browseproducts/100-pc.-Tamper-Proof-Security-Bit-Set.HTML