The PERFECT car mount

I just had a tinkering revelation and ended up making something in 30 seconds that i have been looking for for weeks.

Originally inspired by the car dock epoplive made as well as khaaan on Overclockers UK forums, I cut out the intermediary step of finding a case that the phone can snap in and out of easily. I ordered a suction cup mount for a Garmin Nuvi 205 off ebay for $4:

cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270626403250&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT#ht_2572wt_1137

When I got it this afternoon, I took a look at the clip that is meant to hold the Garmin unit and thought that it looked quite close to the dimensions of the Captivate. Holding the phone in it, it was about 1/2" - 3/4" too wide. So I simply took a lighter, slowly and gently heated up the corners of the clip, and bent them slightly inwards. Out of luck, my guesswork bending resulted in a perfect fit. I added some thin sticky-back foam strips to make the fit more secure, and that's it!

The phone snaps in with purpose and is held in place even as I flail about testing it. It looks super clean, works well, was easy to make and cost a total of $4.

(The pictures were taken with my old E71x; when I find the charger for my point-and-shoot, I can get some better quality pictures up.)

Follow-up videos

For a little more detail and viewing angles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcB3DQ8JKM0]

and my flail test, if any of you doubt how secure this is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igZ9sPxPG2k

Enjoy! I am happy to hear any criticism, answer and questions, etc.!

I am still playing around with it, but with the Body Glove case on, it's hard to get the plastic to bend in such a way that the top clip actually locks the Captivate into place. I've gotten it close enough that in normal driving it may not come out, but think I will keep trying to tweak it to see if I can get it to hold just a bit better. I have no doubt I could get it to work if I was willing to subject the phone to the heat of the plastic and mold it around the case, but not sure I want to chance that.

Update ... best advice I have is don't strive for perfection. In continuing to play with it, I made things worse initially and it took me quite a while to correct things. Do a small bend on the bottom (larger) part of the mount and leave the top side alone if you have a Body Glove Case.

The Garmin holder has two smaller 'clips' that actually snap into cutouts on the GPS device. I wanted those two clips to catch the front edge of the Captivate.



The small bend at the bottom (along the line below) will allow the captivate to get caught by the bottom clip and will align things along the back of the phone.



By just doing that one bend, the clip on the top nearly catches the front edge of the Captivate. It really did hold fairly well but the phone would release itself with a little pressure at the top. Hindsight being 20/20, I think I would have stopped there. For most general driving around I don't believe the phone would have released itself, but I had this need to try to get the top clip to catch fully on the front edge of the phone, so I kept playing.

Essentially, you are trying to follow the contour of the phone in the top side as well, but it's much more difficult because of how it's shaped. As you can see in the pics above, I kind of made a mess of the top.

I did finally get there, although it does look a bit rough. Of course when the phone is in place, you can't see it ...



Bottom line is it will work with the Body Glove Case on. You also won't need to add any foam strips as the case takes care of filling the gap nicely. For the record, I used the genuine Garmin car mount which came with my 250 GPS. YMMV when using the aftermarket versions on eBay, although from the pics they look the same.

Thanks to the OP for the idea. I had been using the Garmin mount and was securing the phone with a rubber band previously. This is much cleaner. I would suggest to all trying this that you order more than one of these in case your project goes awry. Also, be careful not to heat the plastic too much or it will lose shape.

JUst finished mine... I ended up going a little tight, but it actually makes it very stable. I started off using steam from a teapot, which took a long time. Then I just used a ligher for the top part, it was way easer. Just be patient and it will eventually become like silly putty.

Ok here are some pictures finally!! (excuse the car mess and the smuge/shine on the screen)

Still really digging this mount. I'm using a panavise custom dash mount with a garmin 17mm ball adapter to attach to the to the "perfect car mount"

Using my seido active x case the indentations on the case make good spots for the mount arms to grab. I heated both sides of the mount to get the arms right.


Thanks again to the original poster for the idea and to document it.

dm