This is a write up of the installation I just performed of a 1” Ram ball. A phone mount to me ought to be:
1) not a far reach away for the hand
2) not too far from where I’m normally looking
3) does not obstruct the field of view out of the windshield
4) one handed operation to mount or unmount the phone
5) secures the phone when off-roading
The actual phone mount bracket I already had and used for years. It’s a home brew hack. It’s the ideal phone holder - not the prettiest but checks off 4 and 5 above. But what I was missing was a way to mount it in a 5th gen 4Runner. The spacing for this was very tricky.
I started with taking a grinder to the Ram mount:
Then I played this game going between placing it on the outside, and then looking at the clearances in the rear.m when the nut and washer needed to fit. I did not want to remove/cut any plastic behind the radio (but this would of been my next step to make this work if needed)
Then I double checked and triple checked before drilling holes:
Fasteners used were 10-32 3/4” long. The nuts had plastic inserts (very necessary). The outer hex on the nut was 3/16”. Here are some pics during the installation:
Near where the fasteners go through, small sections of scotch double sided tape was used to help adjust from the curved vehicle surface to the flat Ram mount. A small piece of electrical tape covered where the anodization was removed to prevent excessive scratching.
Then the mount added:
The result worked out extremely well. The phone is in the absolute perfect location IMO. Note however the plastic this is mounted to is pretty flimsy as it doesn’t support much weight - therefore this mount is going to pull a single plastic clip in tension. Seems plenty sturdy for my phone but for higher weight bearing screwing into the dash would be better.
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1) not a far reach away for the hand
2) not too far from where I’m normally looking
3) does not obstruct the field of view out of the windshield
4) one handed operation to mount or unmount the phone
5) secures the phone when off-roading
The actual phone mount bracket I already had and used for years. It’s a home brew hack. It’s the ideal phone holder - not the prettiest but checks off 4 and 5 above. But what I was missing was a way to mount it in a 5th gen 4Runner. The spacing for this was very tricky.
I started with taking a grinder to the Ram mount:
Then I played this game going between placing it on the outside, and then looking at the clearances in the rear.m when the nut and washer needed to fit. I did not want to remove/cut any plastic behind the radio (but this would of been my next step to make this work if needed)
Then I double checked and triple checked before drilling holes:
Fasteners used were 10-32 3/4” long. The nuts had plastic inserts (very necessary). The outer hex on the nut was 3/16”. Here are some pics during the installation:
Near where the fasteners go through, small sections of scotch double sided tape was used to help adjust from the curved vehicle surface to the flat Ram mount. A small piece of electrical tape covered where the anodization was removed to prevent excessive scratching.
Then the mount added:
The result worked out extremely well. The phone is in the absolute perfect location IMO. Note however the plastic this is mounted to is pretty flimsy as it doesn’t support much weight - therefore this mount is going to pull a single plastic clip in tension. Seems plenty sturdy for my phone but for higher weight bearing screwing into the dash would be better.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
