Bike Pen R BPR-K-GT & accessory cable?

[GlynH]

I removed the pig-ugly, donkeys hind leg ball-jointed SatNav arm that partly obscured the clocks and also the rather lovely aluminium casting that is the Techmount GT Centre Mount that partly obstructed access to the ignition key (although I might reverse and refit it again as its such a lovely bracket) removing the spacers and fitting the shorter original bolts but have been looking at the Bike Pen R BPR-K-GT SatNav mount that replaces the plastic trim above the clocks to include a SatNav mount higher up in a much better position and retain a factory look IMHO.

Has anybody here purchased the Bike Pen R part and if so what are your impressions of it?

Its not cheap at around 220 Euros but then again neither was the Techmount Centre Mount at £120 I guess.

Is the Bike Pen R part a good fit, is it robust enough and the arm strong enough not to cause the mounted device to bounce up & down when in motion?

Also on the GT is there supposed to be a GPS accessory harness factory-fitted which I guess should be somewhere around the battery box/steering yoke area. What ready-made connector/cable would I need to plug into this to feed the active mount for the SatNav and where is it available from please?

Does this have/need an inline fuse as I have seen references to CANBUS taking care of this. My Audi A8 has CANBUS but it also has 3 fuseboxes scattered around the car to protect the many CANBUS connected devices.

Guessing it will be switched on/off with the ignition so couldn't be used to charge a phone for example during a rest stop with the ignition off.

Previous owner fitted a cigarette lighter socket to the left hand inner fairing panel and although fused directly to the battery I might remove this because even though it could come in handy the socket is a bit of an eyesore although I would have to replace the fairing inner panel also.

I'm nothing if not fussy...

Any info on the above or even alternative mounts would be much appreciated.

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

[TomL]

You can buy the cable from here https://www.nippynormans.com/r-nine-t-family/lead-for-connecting-any-garmin-or-tomtom-gps-into-the-bmw-harness. The connector is under the battery cover next to the battery on a K1300S. Probably the same on the GT.

[sudolea]

It's a very decent mount, well finished, good quality. I had 2 different BikePenR ones on 2 different bikes, and both were well finished and robust. You may want to have a look at some older (K1300S-time) video's on my YouTube channel (same name as my nickname here) to have an idea of how it looked like "in real life" 

EDIT : some memory, far, far away makes me think the BikePenR mount for the GT was a different one than the one for the K1300S, though ... I think their website was clear on that point. Just so you don't order the wrong one...

[GlynH]

Thanks for the replies guys.

@TomL: I ended up buying one directly from BMW for the princely sum of £9.50 inthe end!

@sudolea: Yeah the GT seems to have a different handlebar/yoke setup to some of the other K13 models so some of the mounts out there won't fit. It also has a dull & boring black plastic blanking plug covering up the centre bolt in the steering stem where the other models have a nice, shiny BMW emblem. I did try to order one from BMW but when it arrived I could see it wouldn't fit before I even took it out of the bag.

It looks cheap & nasty and a nice BMW logo would give me something to read on a journey. I could at a push buy a stick-on BMW logo and apply it to the black plastic cap but my OCD wants the proper article as I have seen on other machines...

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

[GlynH]

And now that I am able to post photos I thought I'd illustrate just what I meant when I mentioned the 'pig-ugly, donkeys hind leg ball-jointed SatNav arm that partly obscured the clocks' in my first post lest you think I was exaggerating;



It was also a struggle just getting to the ignition key and don't forget there was the SatNav unit in its waterproof case mounted on top of that little lot! 



An emergency stop would have given me concussion and/or had my fookin' eye out! 

There should be a law against mounting something that fugly on a bike like the K1300...

-=Glyn=-