It isn’t often that you get motorcycle parts made for you. It all started with a conversation with 3DMP, the Portugal-based manufacturer of 3D printed motorcycle parts, and me buying – yes buying, with my own money – an accessory bar for the NT1100.
3DMP had solved the problem of fitting a GPS or mobile phone above the TFT screen on the NT in a way that makes it look like a factory part. They make other parts for the NT and other motorcycles, but as usual, I’m drifting off the point, and I haven’t reached the end of the second paragraph.
3DMP Accessory Bar
The accessory bar comes with a couple of options. One is a nifty holder for the toll tag that ensures it is positioned correctly, and the other is a clamp for the bar that allows a GPS to be mounted.
As with all of the 3DMP parts, the clamp is wonderfully over-engineered, having four clamp screws and a 3-centimetre contact patch with the bar. None of this single screw thin loop stuff: I think I could hang my leathers off the clamp and it still wouldn’t move.
The standard clamp’s face plate features a square recess that accommodates the standard 4-bolt adapter, securing TomTom and Garmin GPS devices, which is where my issues started.
A Big One
To mount a Quad Lock antivibration mount and the Quad Lock charging head, I needed to adapt the 4-bolt plate to Quad Lock’s 360-degree mounting system. By the time I’d done all of that, the GPS was stuck out 6 cm, firmly attached, but looked ridiculous.
In the picture, there is still a charging head to be placed on top. I suppose the good news is that I wouldn’t miss a turn shown on the GPS.
The problem was translating between two attachment types, rather than having one throughout. A quick trawl of the 3DMP website didn’t show anything suitable, so I sent them an email, asking if there was anything in development.
Quad Lock Face Plate
After a few emails and messages, what arrived in the post was one of the development face plates, designed to take the Quad Lock anti-vibration mounts.
There aren’t as many indentations on the 3DMP face plate – the Quad Lock 360 name comes from the multiple rotational positions in which you can mount your phone – but as it is mounting on the horizontal nav bar, numerous positions aren’t really needed.
The other significant difference is that Quad Lock bolts through from the faceplate towards the front wheel. 3DMP preferred to go through from behind, making the parts more difficult to steal.
Road Test
Tightening the screw of the anti-vibration mount, I can see the two faces binding tightly. There is no movement, and the castling on the 3DMP face plate marries exactly with the inside of the Quad Lock damper.
If I then put a standard Quad Lock mount on the damper, it would be an excellent setup. Unfortunately, the Quad Lock charging head I’m using makes the overall length of the mount too long.
This isn’t a 3DMP problem; I bought the Quad Lock bar mount – single screw and good, but not nearly as robust – and putting the anti-vibration damper and the charging head together creates the same issue.
Despite the length of the setup, the 3DMP clamp had no issues with the phone’s weight on the long arm. After an hour of motorway and backroad riding, the phone bounced vertically a few times, but was in the same place at the end of the ride as it was at the start.
Options
The obvious move would be to leave the anti-vibration damper out of the installation, and perhaps that will be an option with the 3DMP face plate in future models.
For now, the 3DMP face plate will only mate correctly with the damper.
Another option would be to move the navigation bar further back, but the NT1100 bracket is too well-designed to allow this. Is it possible to make things too well?
Development continues …
Bottom Line
The 3DMP parts are built to last. They make a range of splash guards and a centre bar for the Yamaha Tracer 7.
Then there are the replacement Honda side case latches (I’ll take a wild guess at the originals breaking), a thumbnail-sized USB dongle to convert wired to wireless Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, and a variety of other accessories.
But the kicker is that 3DMP make what people need, and as 3D printing scales from low to high volumes easily, the costs remain low.
"You will not have to pay anything to the delivery company to receive goods worth less than £135 unless they’re gifts over £39 or excise goods (for example, alcohol and tobacco)."
And if you are worried about being stung with import taxes, here is a link to ‘Tax and customs for goods sent from abroad’: Tax and duty – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
In short, if you import parts worth less than £135, you do not pay VAT or import duties. And I would never suggest breaking orders into separate parts to always keep the value under £135.
That would be wrong … Right?
