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news
Above Category Bike Shop's Bar Fly computer mount now available in UK
The Bar Fly is a piece of Delrin plastic designed to clamp directly to your handlebar and put your Garmin computer in front and in-line with your stem, to offer more adjustability and better visibility than the standard out-the-box zip-ties or rubber-bands fixing options.
The Bar Fly was born in the ‘Above Category’ bike shop in Marin County, California, where it was designed by general manager, Woody Tate who wasn’t impressed with his Garmin’s factory mount - "Out of the box, using a stock mount, the Garmin 500 is mired with poor visibility, is unsafe, and leaves your bike with a tarnished aesthetic. After my first experience with the Garmin 500 I went to work designing The Bar Fly.”
The Barfly puts your Garmin in front of your stem a bit like an SRM unit, and the angle of the unit is adjustable for better visibility, so great for those with short stems, those set at an upright angle, or those that don’t like the way it clutters the bike.
The Bar Fly will hold any Edge computer with the twist back, the Garmin Edge 200, 500 or 800 then, and has the quarter-turn pattern molded directly into the mount itself so messy bands, clamps and zip ties are unnecessary. It will clamp to any 31.8mm bar, is “ethically constructed” in the United States and weighs 19g.
Prestige Cycles in Hove have just picked up exclusive distribution of the Bar Fly in the UK where they’re, you guessed it, flying out the shop at £40 a pop.
Jo Burt has spent the majority of his life riding bikes, drawing bikes and writing about bikes. When he's not scribbling pictures for the whole gamut of cycling media he writes words about them for road.cc and when he's not doing either of those he's pedaling. Then in whatever spare minutes there are in between he's agonizing over getting his socks, cycling cap and bar-tape to coordinate just so. And is quietly disappointed that yours don't He rides and races road bikes a bit, cyclo-cross bikes a lot and mountainbikes a fair bit too. Would rather be up a mountain.
Latest Comments
- AidanR 9 min 53 sec ago
Nope, that's the third cyclist. The second one is invisible.
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The linked article suggests that the station area is covered by an exclusion zone (presumably meaning Lime doesn't recognise it as properly parked...
- slc 36 min 57 sec ago
No rounding - it was 26 minutes. Looks as though someone has walked it many times and found the mean to obtain such precision. Not just looked on...
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Another book suggestion - I can highly recommend "Lost Summers and Half-Forgotten Afternoons: A Mint Sauce collection" - a beautifully presented...
- chrisonabike 2 hours 5 min ago
But... the last is only not the case with drivers on normal roads because driving on the cycle path / footway / rolling a vehicle up there is seen...
- mdavidford 2 hours 43 min ago
I think you're missing an opportunity to pack even more tech into it - add accelerometers that can detect whether they're pedalling or stepping....
- chrisonabike 3 hours 8 min ago
Thanks. I guess the question is "need". If the road is busy, it sounds like it is a desired route between places? In which case (given this an...
- mdavidford 3 hours 16 min ago
Don't know what you mean. I thought my suggestion was entirely practical.
- Rapha Nadal 3 hours 51 min ago
I'd buy a motorbike fo rthat kind of money!
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17 comments
I bought my Bar Fly at http://www.fabulous-bikeparts.de/Garmin-Bar-Fly_1 for 30€
Plus €10 for shipping to the UK. A little cheaper, but not much...
This is a great idea and one I would have grabbed for my garmin but £40! Really?
Bonkers
It's not made by Bang & Olufson is it ?
simply ridiculous price. What planet do they imagine we are on...
thought garmin charging £10 for a edge mounts was expensive...
also think the edge is better protected if you place it ontop of your stem with the std fitting kit.
Here you go, cut it down as you require.
http://item.mobileweb.ebay.co.uk/viewitem;PdsSession=f4860a7c1370a47a19b...
I've got one of these (or rather, a version without the branding) - but it's not an elegant solution, and road vibration can cause the computer to rotate forward whilst riding. A bit of skateboard grip tape under the mount helps, but doesn't totally solve the problem.
As has been pointed out, though, £40 is too much to pay for something better. I'll be waiting a while until a few more options come out.
I want something for my Polar mount but sorry £40 is a joke, £25 is to be honest IMHO. I followed the links to homemade ones and have some ideas now. I'll keep you posted.
The quarq one looks better, except for the quarq branded bit. hopefully this will be the start of a wide range of these things becoming available - that would bring the prices down too.
There was a guy in the UK selling printed garmin mounts - racewheelsdirect.co.uk - but he seems to be sold out and has been for a while.
Quarq (SRAM) makes an aftermarket mount as well. Some have reviewed it better than the Barfly. http://nyvelocity.com/content/equipment/2012/garmin-mounts-barfly-vs-quarq
What about if you have tribars/aerobars fitted? The barfly won't work then (certainly not with bars bolted on to normal road bars). Is there anything similar that can mount across the bars?
I've got one. It works great, having the unit further forward makes it a lot easier to read. It is clearly overpriced, but I didn't get any Olympic tickets so I had some spare cash to burn.
btw Prestige Cycles were great to deal with
Nothing wrong with elastic bands, in my opinion. Don't understand why something hanging off the handlebar is any less cluttering than something attached to the stem. And you cannot 'ethically' source (unnecessary) stuff from the States; flown in perhaps!
Surely the last picture demonstrates the less cluttering aspect pretty obviously, and to be fair the story says "ethically constructed in the US" not "ethically sourced" think it's perfectly possible to ethically construct something in the US.
Got to say though that the price is a bit salty considering they retail for $39.99 in the US - about £25.50, and presumably bought in at trade price. Even £25.50 seems a lot when you consider that something like a Minoura Space Bar costs about £15 tops.
£40 is a bit crazy, Ive seen plenty of examples of excellent home made ones around the web, time to get the dremel out.
I was all "where can I get one" right up to the point I read "£40".
Way way to expensive for a bit of plastic.
It may be ethically produced but it is not ethically priced!
I will stick with my rubber bands.