Eclipse is made by Fujitsu 10 & that company is owned by Toyota/Lexus.

I work at a car dealer, we have a Lexus on the lot with the factory NAV option(Lexus charges $4000 for it). That Lexus unit is identical to my unit, but I paid $900 for mine.......

~John

 

 

>>where is it sold for that ?

Ebay, it was brand new in a factory sealed box but I installed it myself.

~John

 

Well, I used the Nav system to actually navigate to a location, for the first time this weekend, and I can say its pretty bad.

We were at a soccer game, and the coach invited the team over to his house for a little party. I was never at his house before, but he gave out his address. I found his address on the Nav system, and had it plot a route there. BTW, I selected "shortest time".

Well, what should have been a < 6 mile trip, turned into an 18 mile journey.

The Nav system had me go 5 miles in the wrong direction to get onto a highway. Once on that highway, we passed the exit for the road we started at. As a side note, if the Nav system felt it just had to use that highway, why didn't it just route me straight there?

Then two more exits (a total of 3), it has me get off in a town that is quite an over shoot for the town the coach lives in. It then had me take several roads, as it had me back track to the where the coach lives.

Yea, it did get me there, but certainly not via any reasonable sense of direct, nor the fastest, nor the shortest distance.

I plan on bringing my little Garmin to the soccer practice on Thursday, and just for fun have it plot a route from there to the coach's house, and see how it does it.

But for right now, the Nav system gets a well deserved "D-" in plotting reasonable routes.

 

I can pretty much guaranty you the Garmin will blow away that piece of garbage that Ford installs.

I own three Garmin units(I have one on my Harley & my wife & son both use them also). I have an Eclipse in dash unit in the FEH & I used both the Eclipse & a Garmin 2610 together for a while to compare the two.

Both the Garmin & the Eclipse where awesome when it came to routing. Both units immediately pointed out a shortcut to arrive at the neighborhood I have lived in for almost 10 years that I didn't know existed(I always thought it was a dead end road into a neighborhood).

That shortcut has been invaluable at times for me arriving home from work & saves my wife almost 15 minutes of commute time at certain times of the day.

~John

 

One thing I've noted when using the factory NAV unit is that I get better directions and routing if I let it finish looking up the route before I start out. For some reason the unit will tell you to "Proceed to the route" and show the map screen BEFORE it has looked up the whole route. I've had this cause problems like the

you can tell when it has finished looking up the route when the distance to target is populated and not just showing -.--


BTW I'm not excuseing Ford or Visteon for the general poor performance of the NAV

 

Due to the abysmal performance of stock NAV/Radio, I have been looking at the Garmin 7500 huge 7-inch touch-screen display GPS unit to supplement the existing stock GPS/NAV: http://www.garmin.com/products/sp7500/

But I'm having the following hurdles:

In order for the "dead-reckoning" feature to work, it seems Garmin 7500 requires two potentially "complicated" connections: one wire to speed sensor, and another to the cars backup light wire. My question is, where are the speed sensor and backup light wire on my FEH?!!! Are they impossible to find and does the procedure void warranty?

 

If you look at the wiring harness for the factory Nav radio, there is a "speed pulse" on pin 6 of the 17 pin connector. Also, pin 10 of that same connector, there is "reverse". Those might work.

 

My Eclipse unit required both of these connections also.

I picked up the VSS wire(speed pulse sensor) at the ABS brake module. It is a gray/black wire & I tapped into it with a 3M Scotchlock connector. It was slightly confusing at first as there are a couple black/gray wires, but after I found the right one it worked just fine.

As far as the BU light wire, I simply connected it at the right side tail-light & ran a wire to the front under the sill plates.

I don't think the BU light wire is really necessary(the speed wire definitely is necessary, on my unit anyway), I ran it for a month or so without the BU wire connected & then connected it when I had some free time. I could tell no difference whatever with it connected or not.

~John