If you use plastic camera mounts, be sure to change them out.

[duenan]

By the way, DO NOT BUY Contour Roam Rotating Mounts that are sold these days because they stopped production on these years ago and everything floating on ebay or camera shops for 60-70 dollars have been slowly degrading!

Anyway, to get to the point of this topic, if you have ANY plastic camera mounts on your helmet, you need to buy new ones from companies that are still actively producing them and switch them out every 5 or so years.

I say this because the majority of my plastic camera mounts from 6+ years ago are either cracking or degrading.  Even mounts that have been stored around in my garage!!!

I have recently been replacing mounts with ram metal ball mounts and metal swing arms with metal universal camera mounts (that attach directly to my motorcycles), and when I carefully peeled away the old plastic ball mount by sliding floss through the 3m vhb tape as to perhaps reuse the mount, I have found the center of the mount was cracking from the stress of where the ball is placed.   This was true on 2 different plastic mounts for 2 different camera companies.

Also, I have several contour roam cameras because I bought them for super cheap as the company went under, well, semi-bad move on my part because I got a new helmet, needed to attach a mount for it, their rotating mounts are now being sold all over the place for 60-80 dollars!!!  I said no problem, I have 2 spare, I went into my garage, opened up a box of moto stuff, found one of my spares, and noticed it had the white oxidation look to it, I sort of bent a corner and it just crumbled into pieces.   I tossed it in the trash, but decided I should take pics.  Now, it crumbled into tiny pieces, I retrieved the large chunks.  Strangely enough, the actual part that accepts the camera was pretty sturdy and flexible still as you can see in the pic.

Contour went under I believe 2015-2016 so all the mounts being sold out there must have been at the latest been produced 2016.  My mount was probably from 2015, so just beware if any of you own contour cameras.  Just use a universal camera attachment mount if you must use these cameras, and do not buy any contour mounts because they are more than 5 years old at this point.

 

Gopro also uses plastic helmet mounts so they will most likely degrade as well especially if you ride out in the sun.  If you have any 5+ years old, now would be the time to replace these mounts with new ones.  Even if the overall mount seems fine, the "hinge" portion of the gopro mounts are plastic and definitely a weak spot and the constant vibration will eventually cause these plastic hinges to fail from stress cracks whether you want to believe it or not.

 

Edited October 15, 2022 by duenan