Overall, I’ve been really happy with my Dakota. It’s seen me through many (many!) miles of riding and not once let me down.
A couple of times, it did eject on rough ground but I was lucky enough to find it quite quickly on each occasion. Given that a GPS is pretty important to various long rides, I took to using the lanyard around the handlebars as extra security.
A couple of weeks ago, though, it started jumping out of the mount on the slightest of bumps. I supposed that the plastic of the mount had worn down and made it a loose fit.
So I went to level 2 bodging materials (level 1 bodging being cable ties and duct tape): superglue!
The idea was not to glue the Dakota in, but just to build up some extra material on the mount. With thicker rails, it should hold the GPS more securely. Also, Araldite is kind of tacky even after it has dried so that should help too.
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Untreated bike mount
[singlepic id=172 w=320 float=]
Treated bike mount
As you can see, I’ve just put a strip of glue along the rails. I let it dry overnight, then tested with some very rough trails. One trail was horse-hoof pocked and often causes bottles to fly out of cages: not a peep from the Dakota. Success! And cheap, too.
Good call. I find the official Dakota mounts variable. My first one frequently ejected the Dakota from brand new. Ditched that one quick, used a RAM mount for a while, got fed up with level 1 (cable tie) fixes for that one after ~12 months so bought another Garmin mount, which has been perfect. Weird, but now at least I know what to do when it wears out & I’m too tight to buy a new one 😛
I have the two mounts shown above and one of them has been quite loose from the very beginning. It only ever gets used on the commuter and road bike so I’ve put up with it, but there will be glue on both soon!
I’ve learned two things reading this post –
1) You are a genius.
2) I am a complete moron.
My Garmin wasn’t falling out, but I was getting tired of it rotating forwards on the handlebars no matter how tight I did the zip ties.
Oh yes, mount it on the stem – obvious really (sound of my head banging on the desk)!
I’ve been there too, Bill. It was only when I saw someone else’s stem-mounted GPS that I figured it out.
It does mean you can’t have a fashionably short stem, though.
Is there a mount for the Dakota that can be moved from bike to bike?
Or do you have to buy seperate mounts?
Am I restricted to just official Garmin mounts or are there unofficial ones out there?
Thanks
I don’t really know. That mount attaches with cable ties so you can move from bike to bike but eventually it becomes a waste of cable ties.
I have two mounts and occasionally swap them to other bikes.