Bean bag for off-road?

[Martinjmpr]

I'm planning on running two GPS's for my upcoming Moab trip. My trusty old Magellan Meridian will be on a RAM mount, hopefully secured to the dash since it's a heavy bugger and I have had problems with the suction cup un-suctioning at the worst times and the whole thing falling into my lap.

Secondary GPS will be the Garmin Nuvi. It's a small, light, touch-screen unit (more suitable for highway travel than off-road IMO) but I'm trying to keep it off the windshield as well.

Has anyone here used a bean-bag type mount for off-road? My concern is that once the truck starts bouncing around that beanbag will start moving across the dash no matter how "non-stick" the back of it is.

At this point I'm leaning more towards some kind of fixed mount on the dash but wanted to see whether the beanbag was viable or not.

(BTW, if you're wondering why I'm running two GPS's it's because the older Meridian displays data that my newer, cheaper Garmin does not, like altitude and distance to other waypoints. OTOH, the Garmin is useful for finding Points of Interest like banks/ATMs, restaurants, etc.)

 

[trump]

I've got a Garmin bean bag mount for my GPSMap 478. We use it in the Xterra and it works well on the street, but I would avoid it for use in Moab. However, I will add that the 478 is a pretty large unit, so it could very well be fine for your Nuvi when used offroad.

 

[4x4x4doors]

I use the beanbag for my Nuvi and it has stayed put pretty well for my Colorado. The Colorado has a pretty large textured relatively horizontal dash. I'm a pretty slow driver if it is all rough. It has moved a bit but never fallen off the dash for me. The beanbag I use is the one Garmin sells, I would suppose there are differences between the different makers.

 

[robert]

I've got one of the Garmin beanbag dash mounts too and while it works fine for forestry service roads it'll slide around too much for anything off road or that involves bouncing around (I've bounced it off the dash hitting speed bumps too fast). You could always put some 3M double sided tape under it or maybe Velcro then remove the tape when you're done but it'd probably be better to secure it to a grab handle or something. You can use the Ram handlebar mount to secure it to the grab handle or remove one of the trim/grab bar screws and replace it with a Ram ball and have an even cooler setup. There's a how-to in the Toyota truck forum that several people have done.