Introduction: How to Make the Best GPS Bike Mount - for Free!

By MonkeyLectric
About: Dan Goldwater is a co-founder of Instructables. Currently he operates MonkeyLectric where he develops revolutionary bike lighting products.

You can easily make a better GPS bike mount than Garmin can - and you can do it for free! My Garmin bike mount snapped in the middle of a trip, so i scrounged around the back of the car and turned up an innertube and a thick car-washing sponge - that's all you need! after a bit of creative wrapping, the best gps bike mount ever was devised. i've since done some serious off-road riding with it, and i can authoritatively say that the mount shown below is the most functionally perfect GPS bike mount ever. it is 100% vibration & rattle free, the gps does not budge at all, it's lightweight, inexpensive, and very quick to put the gps on and off the bike. you can build the entire mount in under 5 minutes.

Some background: up to now I've used the garmin mounts for my current 76-series unit, and for my older Etrex, and only had endless problems with them. vibration is a big problem with all the Garmin mounts, especially with the larger GPS units like the 76's. the GPS mount vibrates constantly making an annoying rattling sound which is very distracting. on top of that the GPS has varying sensitivity to shock, with the etrex it would constantly shut off when i hit bumps, the 76 is a bit better although i still had to hack it to make it totally shock-proof. and of course, the 76 mount ultimately just snapped when i hit a big bump.

This project is brought to you by MonkeyLectric and the Monkey Light bike light

Step 1: Tie on the Innertube

a full innertube is pretty beefy for just a GPS, so for my large 76 unit i cut a MTB innertube in half lengthwise. for a smaller GPS try a quarter of an MTB tube, or half a road tube.

Step 2: Tie on the Gps

the wrap pattern you use will depend on the gps, and where you can strap across it. but the basic pattern is to tie onto the handlebar, wrap down the stem and back up the stem (sometimes going over the gps and sometimes just around the stem), and then tie onto the handlebar on the opposite side from where you started.

the 2" thick sponge takes up all the un-evenness of the stem/headtube/handlebar

Step 3: Finish Up

make sure you wrap the inner-tube about as tight as you can - that is the secret to keeping the unit rock-steady.

Step 4: Done!

go do some riding!