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Gear Reviews

Shapeheart Motorbike Phone Mount – 2022 Edition Review

Shapeheart motorbike phone mountLast year I reviewed the Shapeheart mobile phone case for motorcycles, it was a good budget offering but had a few niggles I was less fond of. This year the good chaps at Shapeheart took heed of this critique and have released a new and improved version for 2022, which they were kind enough to send in for me to review. Let’s take a closer look at this new model and see how it compares.

Shapeheart is a small firm from France, kicked off by two clever entrepreneurs who started out making arm mounts for runners and then later branched out into solutions for cyclists, scooters and motorcycles.

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News

Future Gear: The Chill Ride Cooling and Heated Vest

We all know the biking mantras ‘dress for the slide, not the ride’ and ‘all the gear all of the time’. Whatever the weather, we really should be wearing all of our protective gear, you just don’t know when you’ll need it. In the winter, the issue is wearing enough gear to stay warm, whereas in the summer the issue is staying cool enough. So, when I received an email from new start up Chill Ride about their new invention of a motorcycle vest that both cools and heats, I was most interested.

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Gear Reviews

Monimoto MM5 Motorcycle Tracker Review

Sadly these days, as a motorcycle owner you can’t afford to ignore the huge motorbike theft crime wave and thus the plethora of security devices that can help protect your pride and joy. If you’ve read my motorcycle security guide, you’ll know that using multiple security items in conjunction can offer the best overall protection. Physical locks can help prevent theft but are often easily beaten with a battery-powered angle grinder. This is where a tracker can come into play, by helping you recover your bike.

MoniMoto Tracker ReviewThieves will often hide a stolen bike in a quiet side alley for a day or two to see if it has a tracker and if someone comes to recover it. This is your window for recovery before it’s completely lost. Otherwise, a tracker can provide location info of a lockup you can relay to the Police to investigate. Whereupon they’ll often find many stolen bikes as well as yours and hopefully enough evidence to charge the culprits.

Monimoto manufactures a unique tracker that requires no wired connection to your motorbike, has a very attractive price and a low monthly subscription cost. So when I was sent a review sample of their Monimoto MM5 motorcycle tracker to test out, I was very intrigued to find out if it lives up to promises.

Watch my view review or read the detailed write-up below.

YouTube player
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Gear Reviews

Review of Shapeheart Phone Mount for Motorbike

There’s nothing quite like getting lost on a motorbike to clear your mind and find yourself. But other days you really just need to get from A to B without hassle or stress. Maybe you need to be somewhere for work, maybe you’re off to a social rendezvous or maybe you’re leading your crew on a ride. For this, you really need a satnav, but motorcycle satnav’s aren’t cheap. However, you’ve got a decent phone in your pocket with loads of GPS apps on hand, so why not use that? For this, you’ll need something like this Shapeheart phone mount for motorbike.

Shapeheart phone mount for motorbike

The folks behind the Shapeheart asked me to review their new motorcycle phone mount, which promises to be a good budget contender, but is it the best motorcycle phone mount for the money? Read on to find out more.

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Gear Reviews

MotoRadds Chin GoPro Motorcycle Helmet Mount Review

When I recently swapped to a GoPro Hero 9 camera after using Drift cameras for years I was pretty disappointed by the GoPro motorcycle helmet mount options. Out of the box, your only option is a sticky pad to plonk the camera on top of your helmet. Fine if you don’t mind looking like a telly tubby and having a huge air brake dragging your head back.

Alternatives either bolt the GoPro sticking out at the side of your helmet or near the chin. Both often use some convoluted sequence of brackets off a sticky pad on the side. All because the GoPro’s do not have a rotatable lens or a side mounting like the Drift cameras, so require mounting upright from a pad on the base. The problem with all these scaffolding brackets is a) you need to buy them separately b) they add extra weight to your lid and c) too many can introduce a source of wobble screwing up your footage. That’s when I came across the Motoradds GoPro Motorcycle Helmet Mount chin bracket which appeared to be a far better solution.

Motoradds GoPro Motorcycle Helmet Mount Buy the MotoRadds GoPro helmet chin mount from Amazon

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Gear Reviews

Denali SoundBomb Split Air Horn Review and Install on Yamaha Fazer FZ6

Denali SoundBomb Split AirhornOn my old Fazer, I had installed a Stebel Nautilus air horn, a super loud horn that saved my bacon on a number of occasions on my daily commute into London. As such, I was keen to install similar on my new FZ6, but with the Stebel horns less readily available in the UK I came across the Denali SoundBomb. On first glance, it appears to be a spitting image of the Stebel horn and is priced similarly at £40.

With the horn being such a large lump, mounting needed some thought as the FZ6 stock horn is mounted between the forks and there are no handy mounting points on the sides under the fairing. Denali sells a number of specific bike and generic crash bar mounting brackets, but unfortunately nowt suitable for the FZ6. That’s when I found the Denali SoundBomb Split version which separates the two halves of the air horn, thus allowing the compressor and horn elements to be mounted individually. A supplied thick heat-resistant hose then connects the two halves. As with other large horns, the compressor should be wired to the stock horn via a relay due to its 20A power draw. i.e. the stock horn wire triggers the compressor via a relay, to power it directly from the battery on its own fused line.

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Gear Reviews

Ring Analogue Air Compressor Pump Long Term Review

Keeping your motorcycle tyre pressures correct is crucial to keeping your bike handling well. When down on pressure and you can really notice the handling go down hill, with cornering suddenly feeling unnatural and tyres squaring off faster. As such every biker needs a good pump they can rely on to keep tyre pressures on spec at all times. About a year ago I picked up this Ring analogue air pump from Screwfix for just under £20 quid and has since been put to good use in that time. Read more to find out my final verdict after a year of use.

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Gear Reviews

Oxford Heated Grips Review – Hot Grips For Commuters

Oxford Heated Grips - HotGrips for CommutersNo one likes cold fingers on a motorcycle. It’s uncomfortable, distracting, hinders fine control and can get painful. It’s also all too easy to underestimate the wind chill factor when travelling fast on a bike. It may be a bearable 5°C outside, but on a 60 mph blast, the wind will chill you down to cool -3°C, which will inevitably give you numb fingers after a short while, even with thick gloves.

I’ve written about a number of approaches to tackle the cold hands on a motorbike issue in the past, but here today I have a pair of Oxford Commuter Hot Grips up for review. Intended to replace an old set of failed heated grips on Mary’s Honda, we picked these up as a freebie gift with a Ride magazine subscription last year. Annoyingly they took ages to turn up leaving Mary with cold hands for the first half of the winter, but finally, I fitted these last January and they’ve been tested thoroughly since.

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Gear Reviews

Oxford Analog Motorcycle Clock Review and Test

I tend to have a love-hate relationship with bus lanes; when you can use them they’re great for filtering past long queues of traffic, but with so many not open to bikes or only active at random times it can be a pain to work out when you can take advantage of them. Especially so when you’re riding an older bike with no clock! This is exactly the problem with my wife’s Honda CBF500. Not wanting to get caught out with a bus lane fine, we bought this Oxford analog clock.

Oxford analog motorcycle clock

Categories
Gear Reviews Hardware

Cree U2 Spot Lights Review

You know what parents are like strong opinions as to what is best for you, mildly tolerant of your motorcycle ‘hobby’, but secretly scared to death you’re gonna kill yourself on your bike. So my old man keeps seeing lots of big adventure bikes adorned with bright spotlights, and declares I must install said distinctive pattern of lights on my bike to ensure I stand out. My Dad has a few odd opinions, but more often than not he’s right.

After borking at the price of offerings from Givi etc, I decided to take a punt on some cheap Chinese lights off eBay. Very cheap at under £20 for a pair including wiring. I didn’t have high expectations, but they can’t be that bad, can they? Read on…