One of those days

[danham]

Ever start a "simple" project and end up, as we used to say at the Porsche dealer, "marrying the job?"

I mount my GPS using a RAM stem mount. For many months it has been too easy to rotate, so every time I hit a bump I have to take my hand off the left grip and turn the screen back to horizontal. Today I remembered that I planned to fix this, figuring a quick turn of the Allen wrench and I'd be good to go in a matter of minutes. Nope.

The Allen bolt tightens the grip of the rubber plug inside the stem, but does not prevent the piece the ball is part of from rotating. OK, I'll just run the bolt out and put a washer in there. What I forgot is that the nut at the bottom will fall off if you undo the Allen bolt too far and that you then have no way to grip the rubber plug to get it out of the stem. For bonus (or is it bonehead) points, the nut dropped out of the hollow stem tube, bounced off the front fender and with that dreaded "tink" noise disappeared into the bowels of the Tupperware.

Without removing the front wheel and fender, there is no way to get something long enough up into the stem tube to force the rubber plug and locking washer/nut holder out of there. And no way to grip it from the top and pull. After a lot of failed experiments, I took the stiff metal rod out of the inside of my long springy magnet part retriever and was able to bend it enough to feed into the tube and generate enough force pushing up to get the plug out. My junk pile yielded a nyloc nut that fits. With an extra washer under the ball bracket, the whole rig is now steady as a rock and it "only" took about an hour.

-dan

[Pud1]

been there, done that.
In order to catch the nut and associated plastic nut housing :
I put a pc of green painters tape across the hole at the bottom of the lower triple tree to catch the nut and housing
then drove the rubber plug down and out with a short length of wooden dowel.

[wyso]

Kawasaki makes a GPS mount.

[danham]

been there, done that.
In order to catch the nut and associated plastic nut housing :
I put a pc of green painters tape across the hole at the bottom of the lower triple tree to catch the nut and housing
then drove the rubber plug down and out with a short length of wooden dowel.

Going in from the top as you did strikes me as a better move than what I did, but I was worried that I would end up jamming the rubber plug in there because it is tapered in the "wrong" direction.

-dan

[wyso]

Kawasaki makes a GPS mount.
195NAE0003

[JohnQ]

Had similar but different pain with the same mount.

It's a little late, but the Quadlock stuff is worth a look.
Fucking expensive like everything worth having, but it's damn nice. Metal construction, legit design, sits flush on the stem, damn rigid after installation.

The drawback is something that can't be removed easily. For me it was a non issue. I'd rather have something that can't be removed with a ram arm.

If you/anyone is interested, I can 3D print spacers that fit under the ram stem. It makes for a better look with the ram setup since the casting supports prevent the ram mount from sitting flush on stem. Made mine a bit more rigid also. I'll send them for the cost of shipping.

[Vex]

I had to remove my stem mount because of the damper. Ended up doing something similar to Bryan's setup, coming off the front tank mount point. Love it.