Mount Gizmos

Gdetrailer wrote:

camperkilgore wrote:
No, not a snow capped peak.

The gizmo's I'm referring to is the electronic stuff that needs to be mounted in the tow vehicle. MANY gizmos.

I have a rear view monitor, gps, two cell phones, tire pressure monitor, and sometimes an ipad mini which we need to access while on the road. We have audio books on the cell phone for listening.

I have spent hours trying various mounts that wiggle, flop, turn loose, and in some states illegal on the windshield. I also read about how some thieves look for the windshield mounts in vehicles to target the most likely ones to break into. At one time I had four suction cup mounts up there.

So I have been trying to get everything down off the windshield and it ain't easy. Our tow vehicle is a Dodge Ram pickup, and the dash is not very mount friendly.

If anybody out there has come up with a great solution to this problem, I would love to hear about it, and pictures would be fantastic.

You have way too much junk, thin the herd.

Pick ONE of THE MOST "important" items that you desperately "need" to drive and all the rest NEEDS to be turned off and placed well outside the drivers area.

No one "NEEDS" two cell phones in order to drive.

TPMS, well folks HAVE been driving for well over ONE HUNDRED YEARS without the "need" for this gadget..

Tablet, well not needed at all, just another distraction..

Rearview camera? That IS what YOUR MIRRORS ARE FOR and they don't need power, wires or will quit working at a bad time..

GPS, well your copilot beside you should be working that thing or at least be using a paper map, not you the driver..

As far as Audio books goes, ditch the cell phones for this, instead replace your built in stereo with a newer unit which has USB input and even BluTooth.. You can often download audio books, rip audio CDs and convert those to MP3 files, place on a USB flash drive and be done with that cellphone thing..

Just because you have "technology" it doesn't always need to be running your life. Disconnect for a while and you will find driving a lot more enjoyable.

For us, audio books are 10 times better than coffee for keeping awake on those long stretches out west. They make us safer.

Audible.com is the service we use for audio books, and the trouble with them is you can't just copy one of their books to a storage device of any kind. They are kind of like Apple. They fix it so you can't do that sort of thing. That's with the membership. Now I think we can buy the books, and that makes it so we can put them on any type of storage device, but that gets really expensive. I haven't found another service with as good a selection of books.

There's a lot of reasons why we looked to electronic devices to "help" us. After experiencing a tire failure that caused a lot of damage to our camper, we decided to invest in the TPMS. I know folks have driven millions of miles without it, but a long time ago we didn't have flimsy expensive rvs and crummy tires that blow up and tear up those flimsy rv's.

Phones don't have to be mounted. But retrieving one from a pocket or under a collection of stuff that we inevitably collect when traveling is a distraction and a dangerous one sometimes. Besides....they have to be charged, so the charging wires have got to be dealt with somehow.

I fully agree that we should all simplify and concentrate on safety. I sometimes want to just get a tent and a little car. But then the larger rv is NICE.