Make your own GPS bracket! - Part I

I got tired of having my GPS mounted on the left handlebar of my FJR, and decided that it should instead be mounted right above the top triple clamp, between the handlebars. The only brackets you can buy that mount there are the ones that get mounted through the steering bolt - and I didn't like that idea. So I'm making my own bracket.

My bracket would be mounted using the bolts that hold the handlebars in. I'll use one bolt on each side. The current bolts are sunk into the handlebars, so I'd need a spacer and a longer bolt to mount anything to them. The existing bolts are M8 x 30. I got some M8 x 45 bolts to replace them, and some 1/2" long aluminum spacers. I couldn't find any spacers that were small enough on the outside and still had a large enough hole, so I got ones that have 1/2" OD (the size I need), and 1/4" ID (smaller than I need, but I'll fix that). Here's the original bolt (on the right) and my new longer bolt:



And here are the spacers before I modified them:



The first thing I had to do was drill an 8 mm hole through the spacers, so that my M8 bolts could fit through. A drill press is good for this kind of thing. Here are the 2 spacers after I drilled them:



And here they are with the new bolts through them:



Test fit of the new bolts and spacers:



The goal is to make a small flat platform to mount between these 2 bolts and then mount a RAM ball on that platform. Here's the RAM ball that I'll use:



The diamond base has a hole at each end that is slightly larger than 5 mm, so I'll use two M5 x 16 bolts to mount it to my platform:



The distance between these holes is 49 mm. I'm going to make a larger diamond-shaped bracket to mount between the handlebars, and then mount the RAM base to it. Here's a diagram I drew of what my bracket should be (all dimensions are in mm in case it's not obvious):



I'm going to make the bracket out of 3 mm thick aluminum, but first I want to make a prototype to make sure everything fits as expected. For prototyping I got a 3 mm thick sheet of ABS plastic:



Remind me to never use black plastic for prototyping again. I should've gotten white. It's really hard to see pencil lines on black plastic.

Use this:



to make a 108 mm x 35 mm rectangle first:



This is how the RAM base would fit on it:



I drilled 2.5 mm pilot holes before making them all correct size:



Then I made them all 5 mm:



Test mount of the RAM ball:



Outer holes drilled to the needed 8 mm:



After spending some time on the bench grinder:



Test fit to the handlebars:



Looks like the 5 mm bolts clear everything perfectly:



Tighten the handlebar bolts and it's all done:



Test fit of the GPS cradle:



I think I'll end up using a shorter arm for it, but I'll figure that out after some test rides.

In Part II we'll make the real bracket out of aluminum!