Zumo User Forums

Just did a trip this weekend and noticed the battery running down much quicker than last year. I know this has been discussed a bit in the past, I believe without resolution, but based a couple of YT videos, seems the battery replacement isn't that hard. From what I can tell, finding a suitable replacement is more the issue. Has anyone blazed this trail yet?

OK then - Seems the answer is no.

Never got to that stage. Ive replaced the XT twice though - does that count.

The batteries used to benefit from being discharged an recharged fully, I dont know if that still applies.
You can get stats on the battery by long pressing the battery icon.

jfheath wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 9:18 pm ...The batteries used to benefit from being discharged an recharged fully, I dont know if that still applies.
You can get stats on the battery by long pressing the battery icon.

This "memory" phenomenon dates back to the early days of nickel-cadmium rechargeables and was even debatable then. What modern li-ion batteries "like" best is being used. So these two extremes will shorten their life: constant charging, and leaving them fully discharged. Because they will slowly self-discharge, this means best practices involve giving them a little exercise once in a while and never leaving them for many weeks at a low state of charge, from which they may not recover. For most applications, just using the battery normally at your convenience works just fine. Note that contrary to some Internet info, a li-ion battery is good for about three years of use and charging, or 1000 cycles. A cycle is not counted by every time you power up or charge. It is when you use the equivalent of 100% of the battery and recharge to full, which may involve many thousands of smaller uses.

Because the XT tends to be used while powered by the bike/car 12-volt battery, the battery may not get much "exercise," so occasional use to preview routes off the bike, for example, is good. Also, the shutoff procedure for the XT has ruined more than a few batteries because if the device is not fully powered off, just sleeping, the battery runs all the way down even though the screen is dark and in some cases will not wake up or charge.

-dan

Partial answer in this link. Also have searched for 361-000133-00 battery with no luck.

https://www.gps-forums.com/threads/garm ... ery.47815/

You could attempt ressurection of the existing battery if discharged
https://www.zumouserforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=1589

Disassembly video

Do you not have it powered while on the bike?

In my opinion the battery is only there to give it life while off the bike for a while once on the bike and navigating it should have permanent power

Stu, yes of course, always use it in the powered mount. The problem we're talking about is when you discharge it below a certain threshold and can't get the GPS to function again. So we either need to fix the battery or replace it.

https://www.zumouserforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=1589

Update, I opened up the XT and the battery voltage is 3.8V. So I unplugged it from the motherboard and left it overnight, plugged it back in next day and now it won't boot up at all, even holding the power button 30 seconds to a minute, and whether I press bottom right screen or not. At least before I unplugged the battery I had the ability to see "GARMIN" on the screen with a scrollling strip underneath that indicated it was trying to do something...

Call Garmin. They might have a trick that you can try.

Or -Did you by any chance disturb the screen ribbon cable connector when you removed the battery ?

Or try this which I discovered and documented. It enters a firmware pre-boot procedure. Firmware is the stuff that is programmed into the hardware, and is not easily over-written.

https://www.zumouserforums.co.uk/app.php/ZXT-P85

• Firmware: Not to be confused with the XT system software v6.60. The process described is a bit like tapping the Del Key or F8 on a PC before the operating system software loads up. The firmware is reponsible for loading up the System software (eg v6.60) after a complete shutdown. The first thing that it does is to display the "Garmin" Logo in the screen centre.

You might need a magnifying glass and the correct light conditions to see the text. But the screen shots and facsimilie screen will allow you to peruse the options before doing it.

If you get this far, Option A01 (default) is a normal reboot - which might be worth trying first. If not the rest of this isn't going to work !

Option A03 and then perhaps B03 - which installs the previous version of the system software which it keeps in internal memory somewhere.
At least if you can get it to enter this screen, you know that the unit isn't dead.




Skip the first bit which is to do with getting system software onto an SD card.

Start part way down at the line which says:

Switch off the Zumo XT - ie hold in the power button until the screen shows the Red Off Button, and press that.

I recently got my old 660 out of the cupboard to do a map update and found that when I plugged it into the PC it kept saying insert battery. This I assumed was because the battery had run down with no use over the last 2 years. It would not take a charge while the back was removed because of this error message.
I found in the end that plugging it into the car mount and charging it that way reactivated the battery and I can use it again so it might be worth reassembling and plugging it into your bike mount to see if that kicks it back into life.