Shock-Proof your Garmin GPS

Step 6 Identify the fix

We will solder a capacitor onto the main circuit board right where the power comes in from the battery. this way if there is a momentary disconnect of the battery, the capacitor supplies the power until the battery is connected again.

The tricky part is that there is not much free space inside the GPS to put a capacitor! We'd like to use a large-value capacitor since the bigger the value, the longer it can power the GPS for. I just looked for the biggest one i could find that would fit the case. It turned out that i probably could have fit something a bit bigger in, but i didn't know that until i finished. my loss is your gain!

By carefully inspecting the main GPS circuit board, I was able to find where the battery power came in. It is actually marked pretty well on the board, and there is a small test point on the board we can solder to for the positive terminal. I confirmed my guess with a continuity tester. for the negative terminal, there are quite a few spots on the board where we can solder to. i've marked these locations in the photo.

I then located a spot on the board where I could glue the capacitor without it getting in the way - off to the side of the LCD.