Some of my experience in this arena ...
RAM BRAKE-RESERVOIR MOUNTS:
Regarding the
B-346U brake-reservoir cover mount that RAM sells, in addition to longer screws, it also includes little
spacers:
The RAM-B-346U base fits cleanly over your existing brake/clutch reservoir cover with the B size 1" rubber ball offset. Made of die cast aluminum with an overmolded rubber ball, both form and function are unsurpassed. Installation is simple and all necessary hardware is included. The mount is...
rammount.com
Those spacers are there explicitly for curved covers, such as found on many (all?) Beemers.
(As an aside, in my Burgman 650 days, there was a company called MCL -- for Motorcycle Larry -- that sold complete
replacement brake covers for those scooters, with built-in extensions for one or two RAM balls-on-a-thread:
That was the way to do it, a superb product. I did a lot of playing around with those cover mounts, e.g.:
Importantly, note that the setup in that pic is a
modified RAM part: the end clamps are all RAM, but I drilled them out a bit, in order to put a
15mm bar in there, in place of RAM's half-inch bar. 15mm is a very common diameter in the world of photography accessories, for attaching goodies to tripods and what have you, such as that rotatable clamp I used for some time, to experiment with a GoPro positioning back there.
Alas, Larry only sold those for the Biggest Burgman, he's no longer among the living, and he took his company with him.)
WINDSHIELD-MOUNTED SHELF & RAM BALL:
I have no idea whether this is relevant to the CE-04 thread that we're in now, but on the off-chance that something analogous is available, let me just point out an earlier thread I started:
https://www.bmw-scooters.com/thread...windscreen-then-added-ram-ball-to-shelf.3375/
This is a shelf that I got cheap from AliExpress, but specifically for the C 400 scoots (at least prior to the adjustable windscreen that the 2025 model introduced).
It came with a bar mount on one of its two pieces of metal, but I ditched that piece, drilled a hole in the remaining piece, and put a RAM-ball-on-a-bolt in the hole:
Next, mounting an extension (double socket arm, in RAM-speak), then a phone-mount with vibration dampener, looked like this:
As I say, just trying to offer some ideas, as this was on a C 400.
PHONE MOUNTS WITH VIBRATION DAMPENERS:
Based on Apple's initial warning from a few years ago, about vibrations possibly damaging a phone's camera-stabilization hardware, lots of motorcycle-oriented phone mount companies started offering vibration dampeners.
The
major players that I'm aware of -- as opposed to offerings on AliExpress and suchlike (which I deem "suspect," even if they
may be from the same factories as the brands that I respect) -- that offer moto phone mounts with built-in or optional vibration dampeners are:
- Hondo Garage
- Peak Design
- Quad Lock
- Rokform
- SP Connect
I had a Hondo Garage "Perfect Squeeze" in the early days, and they probably make the most robust dirt-riding mount I know of.
Quad Lock is probably the most well known of the bunch.
I believe BMW has now partnered with SP Connect, in terms of some optional accessories to be added to a bike order, for instance. In that vein, Wunderlich has also started selling SP-Connect goodies.
I don't know much about Rokform, but have read a few nice things about them.
I picked Peak Design for my first post-Hondo-Garage mount largely based on a video from Marc Stones:
I've subscribed to his vlogs for a couple of years now (as well as his German-language persona of "Scooteria"). He owned a C 400 for a while, among assorted other scooters and bikes.
The PD locking mechanism is borderline magic, the way it locks in place without my doing anything. (Like the others, detaching the PD case requires squeezing some tabs.) I also liked that case because you can buy a credit-card holder gizmo that magically attaches to it, and I wanted that.
MOTORCYCLE CARPLAY/ANDROID AUTO DEVICES:
In the last year or two, gobs of companies started offering CarPlay/Android Auto devices for motorcycles. Many of these come stock or optionally with cameras and TPMS. They all wirelessly connect with your smart phone, which can then be left in your jacket pocket, tank bag, etc.
I entered this world before the start of this season with an Aoocci C6. I wanted to check out this area, and I also wanted a TPMS for my Meteor. (I did not hook up the cameras, as I didn't want to bother. I always have at least a front-facing dashcam, in a sense, as I have a GoPro recording all the time, anyway.)
The C6 was the cheapest I could find: about $170 with coupon code, and you can get codes for almost all of these on their web sites or as part of YouTube "influencer" videos.
Here's how it looks on the Meteor:
(By the way, as you can see in that last pic, the TPMS readouts on that, or the dedicated TPMS screen, are a real eye test. Very difficult to read on the move, although my recent cataract surgery may help with that. I almost can't recommend that unit, because of the stupidly small font they used.)
Mind you, I only care where I am or where I'm going perhaps once or twice a year; a fun part of my day trips is wondering where I'll come out, i.e., when I'll recognize some state road and figure out where I am. But I have played with, set on Google Maps, and it works a treat.
If I absolutely -- rarely -- need directions on my C 400, I can mount my vibration-damped iPhone 11 Pro, as shown in those shelf-with-RAM-ball pics above. (I don't need the TPMS function because of my eventually successful quest to get
internal TPMS sensors mounted: see
https://www.bmw-scooters.com/threads/2025-tpms.3557/post-30463 .)
If you want to go big-time into the world of motorcycle-designed CarPlay/Android Auto devices, the really big players, to my knowledge, are Chigee and Carpuride. User
@Rugerbear, for instance, mounted one of the Carpuride devices a few months ago on his C 400: see
https://www.bmw-scooters.com/threads/carpuride-installed.3574/ .)
Those companies offer brighter, more sophisticated, more functional moto devices, and -- unlike my cheapo C6 -- some of them have firmware that can be updated. But they are also commensurately more expensive, as one might expect. We're talking in the $500, $600,
and up range.
Here's another video from Marc Stones, if you want a look at the hot-off-the-presses Chigee AIO 6 MAX, perhaps the class leading moto device at the moment:
One last note on these, based on some research I've done (just because I sometimes have too much free time): if you expect one of these
high-end devices to be compatible with the Wonder Wheel control on your left switchgear, um, lots of luck. It looks to me as if you need BMW's "Nav Prep" installed to make that a reality, and even then it's functionality is probably model-specific.
I've gone down a few rabbit holes trying to find out -- mostly just out of curiosity -- to see if one of the devices would offer some Wonder Wheel control on my C 400. Without Nav Prep, I doubt it, even if having a dealership enable some firmware setting(s). Even with Nav Prep, it could be a problem.
Still, even without such BMW-specific integration, these units work well for maps. As I say, I did some experimentation with my cheap C6 on the Meteor -- which certainly doesn't have a Wonder Wheel-like control, and it was fine: very clear, very quick. If I
often found myself in need of a GPS, I would probably buy some CarPlay device, and mount it where I show my phone in those pics way above.
I hope some of this is useful to some reader(s) out there.
