There is an inexpensive, sturdy way to mount the Garmin zūmo XT on a KTM 790 Adventure.
I’ve been riding with the Garmin zūmo XT for almost a year now. It’s the best motorcycle GPS I’ve ever had. It does everything right. At first I was worried that the mounting method would not be secure enough to hold the GPS when riding on bumpy, challenging terrain, so I epoxied a lanyard to the XT as a backup.
Zumo XT lanyard
After thousands of road miles, hundreds of rough off-road and trail miles and a few off-road crashes the GPS has never come loose or disconnected from the Versys 650’s mount.
Last fall I switched from the Versys 650 to a KTM 790 Adventure and mounted the zūmo XT using RAM mounts.
Heavy bulky undesirable mounting method using RAM mounts.
This worked great but the added weight and offset made the GPS bounce around more than I liked.
I’ve been using this custom cell phone holder mounted to the handlebars on my adventure bikes in all kinds of weather and terrain, and it’s held up perfectly. It’s the perfect phone holder because:
Phone can be inserted and removed easily with one hand.
Phone will never, ever fall out.
Charger is waterproof. No removeable cables.
Industry standard RAM mount.
Since I’m assembling a second one today, I thought I’d show you the simple parts and steps involved. Parts are about $55 USD… plus epoxy.
You might be able to use a different charging pad but it’s imperative that it be very thin. This one is advertised as being IP67 waterproof too.
Insert your phone in the holder and determine the best place to align the charging pad. Remove your phone from the holder.
Use a sandpaper scrap to scuff the RAM holder and the back of the charging pad.
Attach the RAM ball to the RAM mount tightly.
Loosely attach the four side stoppers to the RAM cradle.
Insert your phone, position the side stoppers, remove your phone, tighten the side stoppers.
Attach the charging pad to the holder with epoxy.
The black chargers were not available so I bought a white one and I’ll spray paint it. I wish the USB cable was a bit more durable but so far I haven’t had any problems with this setup at all.
This is a vast improvement over the RAM X-Grip holder. Good luck!
The first thing I add to every motorcycle I get is a set of amber auxiliary conspicuity lights. For me, riding without them is like riding with bald tires.
In 2019 I was pleased to find a conspicuity light option that checked all the right boxes:
Why would you want auxiliary lights on your motorcycle? Conspicuity. Besides brightening up dark roads and trails, front-facing auxiliary lights make you and your bike more visible to oncoming traffic all the time, day or night. That might save your life.
Results from a study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration here in the US “suggest that enhancing the frontal conspicuity of motorcycles with lighting treatments beyond an illuminated low beam headlamp may be an effective countermeasure for daytime crashes involving right‐of‐way violations.”
Aux Lights on the KTM790 Adventure
I prefer amber since it contrasts with my white headlight. Ideally you want to create a triangle configuration with your front-facing lights. This helps oncoming drivers recognize perspective and determine how far ahead you are.
When drivers glance and see a single motorcycle headlight in the distance, even if it’s just a short distance, their brains subconsciously interpret that as two automobile headlights close together, and therefore very far ahead. So they pull out into your right-of-way thinking you are very far away and not a threat. Their innocent mistake in judgement might kill you.
When drivers glance and see three lights their brains work a little harder to figure out what’s coming. Is that a locomotive? That mental double-take is hopefully enough to delay their actions, and keep them out of your way.
These Exzeit LED lights are surprisingly bright and will help you navigate dark forest roads and campgrounds. When positioned properly, the beam pattern compliments your headlight’s without blinding oncoming traffic. When switched to high-beam, the light is higher and brighter. My initial installation on the Kawasaki Versys 650 combined the high and low-beam wiring and the lights were way too bright and offensive. I’ve since disconnected the high-beam wiring permanently.
I’ve had aux lights on all my bikes in the last ten years and these are by far the easiest to install. They are small enough and light enough that you probably don’t need any extra brackets or widgets to attach them to your bike. The aluminum housing has threaded holes on four sides so they can be mounted from just about any angle. Use thread–lock on those short little screws that come with the lights. You could probably even zip-tie them to your fork legs if you’re lazy.
Wired to the bike’s rear 12v switched accessory connectors
On my KTM 790 Adventure I simply drilled a hole in the plastic side panels and bolted the LED brackets in a hanging position. This puts the lights exactly where I want them, creating an almost equilateral triangle. They are out of the way if the bike tips over and they do not interfere with steering. The wiring from each light is joined under the front seat and is routed to the switched auxiliary connectors near the tail light.
These are BLACK shirts and are available in LARGE and X-LARGE sizes only. They are made from a very soft and comfortable, non-shrinking cotton/poly blend and are printed locally, right here in Olympia, WA USA.
Shirt + international postage is $30. Includes TWO FREE MOTOTREK STICKERS. Please use these PayPal links here to order! Make certain your PayPal shipping address is correct!
If you would like to order a different quantity or combination not listed above, please email a request to info@mototrek.net.
Orders will ship within a day or two and will probably take two weeks to arrive. If we sell out, your order will be refunded immediately and this page will be updated to reflect our inventory.
We were excited when Sena sent us a pre-release version of their 10C Pro helmet camera/communicator. The 10C PRO is a remarkable device in that it combines a capable Bluetooth communicator AND and a 1440p action camera is a compact, lightweight, easy to operate device that mounts comfortably to the side of any motorcycle helmet.
We immediately took it out for a test ride and published this video.
Although the video quality from this new camera is leagues better than what we got from the old 10C, it’s still not as good as what most people expect from action cameras in 2018. The 10C PRO is still not available commercially, of course, so it’s totally possible that things might be improved with a firmware update. We’ve suggested to Sena that they reduce the baked-in image sharpening (detail) and lower the chroma saturation in order to improve image quality.
Audio quality is not that bad given that the 10C PRO’s noise cancellation needs to differentiate between voice and not-voice. Removing wind and background noise from an inexpensive microphone travelling at 60mph is no easy task. However, for some reason the 10C PRO records audio at only 128kbps and in stereo, and it would seem that dynamics could be improved if that bit rate were at least doubled. Even the old 10C recorded audio at 500kbps (mono).
We also found that for some reason, YouTube’s re-compression after uploading does not do the Sena video any favors. The files from the camera really do look a lot better than the clips on YouTube. You can download the raw 1440p clip here (845MB)Compare this to the YouTube and Vimeo uploads and you’ll see how much re-compression degrades the quality. I’m pretty sure Sena could drastically improve this by reducing the baked-in sharpening/detail in the 10C PRO.
Since we scaled the Sena’s 1440p video clips down to 1080p for our review video (above) we decided to include a raw 1440p/29.97p video clip excerpt here for those who care. This clip was encoded in Adobe Premiere from a 1440/29.97 sequence to a 1440/29.97 40mbps mp4 file. You can bypass YouTube’s recompression and download the the file directly here (845MB).
