Safety leashes for my race bike GoPros.

I'm slowly working my way to the top of the online Motorbike content food chain. Starting with this blog and slowly progressing to other social media. Next comes getting my YouTube Channel up to speed and then finally lucrative sponsorships, press passes and free motorcycles thanks to my highly successful motorcycle media empire. I have invested my hard earned pennies in a few last year model GoPro cameras and other accessories so that I have all the gear to make quality videos even though I don't have the skills just yet. This next project is required to both protect my investment and to satisfy safety regulations for many track day and race organizations. Follow along this cheap, quick project that you can do to keep your bike cameras safe and focused on the action.

A $5.00 trip to the hardware store produced these items. On the left is 1/16th inch vinyl coated wire rope 6ft long and a pack of 1/16th inch ferrules. The wire rope will become my tether that will act to back up the GoPro sticky mounts I have on the Ninja. I got vinyl coated wire to help prevent damage to my bike body work or to the GoPro's case from the metal wire. The ferrules are used to make loops as I will explain below.

The basic idea is to put slip the ferrule onto the end of the wire a few inches down from the end of the wire into one of the ferrules two holes. You then loop the wire around or through something like a steel ring and put the free end of the wire into the other hole. You pound the ferrule flat to smash the soft metal of the ferrule around the wire locking it into place. I made my loop big enough so that the little end of the GoPro thumb screw can fit through it, but the big end can't. Now when I screw the camera to the mount, the tether will be attached to the thumb screw. If the sticky mount holding the entire camera falls off the bike, the tether would still be attached to it and to the bike. This keeps the camera from becoming a track hazard.

And this is just a shot of the thumb screw putting the words above into an easily understandable picture. You can see from the last two pics that I had to strip the vinyl coating off the wire for it to fit through the ferrule holes. I should have gotten 3/32nd of an inch ferrules instead of the 1/16th inch ones. No bother as it worked a treat and the tether is firmly wrapped around the thumbscrew without a chance of it sliding off the big end.

I made a second loop on the other end of the wire. I made the second loop a bit bigger than the first. My intentions are to loop the little end through the big end around some fixed frame piece of the bike as can be seen above. I made sure to give my self some extra slack when choosing the ultimate length of the tether so that I had freedom to experiment with the best mounting position for the camera. I also put some heat shrink wrap around the smashed ferrule to protect the bike from the metal ferrule rubbing against something.

Here is the completed tether with my front camera. The camera is a GoPro Hero 4 Session mounted to get a shot of me while operating the bike's controls. It also helps me check my head position through the turns and my body position when hanging off dragging knees. I looped the tether through the front fairing stay underneath the stock gauge cluster. I double checked that the tether wouldn't catch the handle bars. The camera already clears the left grip, but I didn't want to get into a sketchy situation with the bars locked after the grip or lever got tangled in the leash.

I did the same with my rear camera. I also use this camera to check body my position. I can switch this camera around to get shots of whats going on behind me. I don't do that so much as all it shows is the multitude of other riders passing me like I'm standing still. I looped the tether through the rear subframe under the seat. After removing the grab handle that comes stock on the little Ninja, I have a nice gap for the tether to slide through between the seat and the tail end bodywork.

This was an easy hour long project that only cost me a few bucks, but could help me save a few hundred. I have two more cameras that I could mount for more cinematic coverage of me riding slow on the track, but for now two angles will do. I have plenty of wire left over and a bunch of GoPro sticky mounts to play with different mounting positions all over the bike. I'll watch some MotoGP to get an idea of what camera angles make for the best action.

Thanks for checking out this post. I hope it gives you some ideas for your own onboard bike videography. I'd love to hear about your exploits tacking a bike to the track or editing sweet action footage. Drop me a line via my one of my social media links on my contact page. Thanks for reading!

Blue