e34 Touring

[straight6pwr]

did some back road kettle moraine isle of man inspired pavement blasting this weekend. I managed 200 miles in about 4 hours.

wishing i had my co-pilot. it wasn't the same without her.

ANYWAYS, found a cool spot for a couple pictures to share. The fall colors weren't on full blast, but it still was amazing.

Also, if anyone is curious about the best route through the kettles, here it is. I feel like I'm sharing some trade secret, but no point in keeping it to myself.  This route is fairly complicated, and even after 6 years or tweaking, I still need a map and notes to get it right, but its perfect match of great driving roads and scenic views. Most of the northern portion follows along the Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive.  We never managed to go south through Delafield to the lower portion of the Kettles because with the above drive and stops, it was already a 6+hour day. Also note, some of the roads in the Holy Hill area are pretty bad pavement wise, so if you have oil pan concerns or stupid rubber band tires, you may not be a fan. The e34 and my old 24v (skid plate) e30 did fine but YMMV

(Google maps won't let me plot the whole thing, so its in parts)

Part 1 - Germantown to Cedar Lake

Part 2 - Cedar Lake to Glenbeulah (Elkhart Lake)

Part 3 - Turn around and do the whole route backwards.

Also, I'll probably be doing this drive again Sunday the 23rd if anyone is interested. Its too much damn fun.

[m42b32]

Next time I go up to RA I'm definitely taking this route

[The Full Banana]

I would be up for that drive! I love venturing around and exploring roads over that way.

[straight6pwr]

well, with all the fun snow driving, and ice rally coming up (which I'm going to try for the first time), i decided I needed to find a way to mount my GoPro in the e34 (and e30). i ordered a suction cup mount, but its on back order and may not show up for a while. so after some testing, i found the best spot to be directly between the front seats (where lots of race cars mount a camera on the cage). so i went about making a bracket with some cheap parts from the hardware store.

soon to be wed:

i sort of wandered about the hardware store looking for something that might clamp easily to the headrest, and boom! a ground clamp that has a threaded hole for attaching shiz.

and some aluminum c-channel to attach to it.

a little filing of the clamp

fits like a glove

 

put a hinge at the end for some extra reach forward, and some fine tuning of the camera position in the end

the camera is mounted with a correct threaded bolt (in general, camera tripod mounts are 1/4x20 thread, as is the case here).

i put some bolts in the c-channel to keep it from collapsing when i tighten down the mount.

voila! camera with be perfectly centered between driver and passenger, making it as far from each person's head as possible. also, it will be at eye-level, which will look the most natural on video.

and so i don't cut my ear off.

replaced the hardware with proper length bolts, lock washers, and philips heads so the whole thing installs only with a screw driver. I may get some 1/4x20 bolts with pre-installed knobs so it can be done by hand, if they have some at the store.

next update will surely be a video from this rig.

[patsbimmer1]

FUCKING BRILLIANT!  Now refine it and sell it for $60 a piece.

[KaiserRolls]

She gone vibrate

[straight6pwr]

KaiserRolls said:

She gone vibrate

not solid enough? do you have a setup in your car?

do you mean vibrate as in shake with the suspension or transfer with the engine vibration?

[KaiserRolls]

Second one, the mount is awesome and will probably work great to be honest. I have just had 0 luck with hard mounting GoPros to anything ever. I always end up seeing the vibration come through the picture (if that makes sense) but then again, the e34 is comfort and class in a nice package, so who knows. Helmet mounts are nice because your head sort of acts as a gimbal. The suction cup mount is okay for vibration. The rubber suctiony part helps knock down some vibration.

[patsbimmer1]

What if you put some rubber around the seat mount area to help absorb the vibrations.

[KaiserRolls]

That would probably help. I am interested to see the video, I've always wanted to make a mount for inside the car but I suck at things.

Dan make this one next:

It goes on your roof and points forward at all times due to wind and science

[Boris3]

Headrest mounts are pretty common and go from $45-100 from venders or can be diy out of pvc, wood, etc. Search camera headrest mount. Straight6pwr has a good design.

Vibration with this approach though depends on how solid the seat back is, especially in an older car and the passenger seat being empty.

[KaiserRolls]

Boris do you have any in car footage? What mount do you use/did you make your own?

Dan as soon as you can upload footage share that stuffs. I need to make an in car mount. Helmet mounted GoPro worked well for motorcycle, but didn't transfer to well to in car stuff

[Jdesign]

Genius. I am curious to how the footage turns out vibration wise.

[Boris3]

KaiserRolls, my setup is in a gutted and caged race car with an old GoPro Hero2 attached to the cage cross bar, so not much help. Clamps to the bar and has a 4" tall post piece that that attaches to the camera. I'm switching to a beefier IO Port roll bar mount this season since my run ins with the gators at Blackhawk Farms in my last race last season led to some strange camera angles (my youtube channel is hrfe30, gator effect is in the Loooong Race Part I video about 12m in and gets worse with a couple of T6 gator run ins later on).

As i mentioned in my last if you google "camera headrest mount" you'll see some options on attaching it to passenger seat. One DIY design has a crossbar that attaches to the headrests.of both seats to be more stable...potential Darwin award with that one. The GoPro Suction cup mount seems to hold up well for folks, attached to the roof or sides depending on the angles you want. Some racers use that setup for a supplemental rear facing camera on the roof/trunk

[straight6pwr]

rich - your videos look great, definitely a stable setup except when attacked by a gator.

mine, not so much on the first attempt - lots of camera shake! when the car isn't moving, i'm not getting any vibrations, so that's good at least. the whole setup has a bit of axis rotation and a lot of springing action of the aluminum arm. the position of the camera is also far to close to me, as my face and shoulder are in the frame. v2 here we come.

[straight6pwr]

so i removed the 'extension' part of the mount and added a second cross bar to make the whole thing very solid. no more springing action. a bit more difficult to mount, but since size is now small enough i can leave it mounted to the car semi-permanently and not worry about safety or it being in the way. its is only about 1" wider than the shoulder of the seat.

the 'ground clamp' is conducive to having a bar on both sides.

i also liked pat's idea of isolating the whole thing with rubber to maybe reduce small vibrations. some cheap rubber washers in the parts aisle did the trick:

safety first!

installed pics, and a test video coming tomorrow. going to film my commute to work and see how it looks.

[straight6pwr]

more R&D needed. v2 certainly much better than v1, but still getting shaking over bumps, which is every 1 second on Milwaukee roads. it makes it look like i'm driving a car with stiff race suspension offroad. from my research it seems like everything needs to be rock solid to help keep the camera lined up with the car. i'll be investigating the tripod mount/screw to see if it has some give and looking at the passenger seat to see if there is a way to reduce bouncing there. maybe remove the rubber isolation strips.  obviously, the seat back has a bit of play in these old BMWs, so i'm thinking some ratchet straps from the seat to the rear bench area to put a little tension on the seat to hold any movement to a minimum.

mitch your prophesy is coming true.

[KaiserRolls]

Not so much a prophecy, just bad experiences lol

[patsbimmer1]

This might be worth it in your quest for mounting excellence.

https://www.turnermotorsport.com/p-182590-gopro-grab-bag-of-mounts/

[KaiserRolls]

The amount of money GoPro makes off of Chinese molded plastic parts is unreal. $20 for like 5 things that cost maybe a nickel to manufacture