Fitting new GPS part 1

But first things first, our traditional Poasjrit (or Easter Tour in proper English) on Easter Monday. Was again a lovely drive through our lovely three countries area (Germany/Netherlands/Belgium). Sadly I forgot to stop more often to take some more pictures, or it was just too crowded to do so …

And the car behaved rather well, though she thought it a good idea to scare me a bit! Before setting of I had checked all fluid levels and the coolant level was still spot on. But after entering the town of Valkenburg a/d Geul (with well over 150 kilometres covered) an ominous red light suddenly appeared in the dashboard’s instrument cluster. The low coolant light to be precise. And of course it appeared just when I hit stationary traffic, and directly after I hit a speed bump. First thought (wishful thinking) was that the small spade connector on the header tank had come off. At least while sitting in the traffic jam the temperature remained rock steady. And after a few minutes the low coolant warning light switched itself off again. And the temperature gauge was still refusing to move. Looks like a glitch I had almost forgotten about and which is usually caused by (slight) corrosion on the spade connector of the coolant level sender in combination with sudden pressure changes in the coolant system. Something to keep an eye on!

And the old GPS unit decided to remind me of the fact that it really isn’t up to it anymore. Which brings me back to this post’s title! Earlier in the month I started in earnest with the preparations for this year’s 10 Countries Run; designing, fabricating and fitting a mount for the new GPS device (TomTom Rider 550), which I purchased earlier in the year. The original plan was to fabricate a simple plate to which the mount could be bolted and which could be strapped to the centre ventilation grilles using cables ties.

With a centre grill retrieved from my spares hoard, I  cleaned, measured and carefully inspected it. After which I thought it a good idea to add some more cable ties for peace of mind and to keep it secure in its position. But also to stabilize the rather flimsy mounting of the ventilation grills.

And that’s where it all went wrong 😋 With the help of AutoCAD and machining software (from Schaeffer AG) the simple plate got ever more complex. But in the end a lot of the cable ties were ditched in favour of a fully machined two layered design with two rectangular recesses at the back. These should allow the mounts to fit nicely over the protruding ventilation grills, while resting against the grill’s surround. And thus preventing the mount from moving across the grills. And only two sturdy cable ties (hidden from view) remain to mount it to the centre grills:

With the design ready it was time to have the two files loaded in the milling machine. And after milling and powder coating this is how the two parts look like in real life:

But before screwing the mount together there was a first trial fit of the “positioning” plate. Glad that one fitted perfectly, though it is a pretty tight fit. Maybe next time I should calculate in slightly more tolerance for the powder coating:

Also the original TomTom mount/loader fits perfectly to the front part of the mounting plate:

And the final test was assembling all parts and placing them on the centre grill I have used as a template so far. As you can see again a perfect fit:

Remains fitting the mounts to my two road going cars. And that includes securing the flimsy mount of the grills to the dashboard moulding, thus preventing them from falling out of the dashboard while driving over the not always very smooth tarmac around the area! And also finding a correct electrical feed for the loader. But that will take some time because the dashboards of both cars need to be removed for that, and not really looking forward to that! To be continued ...