Mountain biker projects during South Africa’s Lockdown Level 5 and 4 in 2020 ranged from building backyard jump lines, riding around gardens for 24 hours and seeing how long you could trackstand for. For one Jeffreys Bay mountain biker, the hard lockdown got him to find a way to eliminate cable ties…
By Sean Badenhorst
Cable ties – those useful plastic fasteners that are as much a part of mountain biking as chain lube. Besides the number boards we need to attach for races, some mountain bike trails parks also require us to fit one. But as you will know, it’s not straight forward.
If the cable ties are small and you have a thick bar, you have to link them up in order to just secure the board. Then, if you have a bike GPS mount, you find yourself getting frustrated at how best to secure the board without it catching on your GPS.
Cable ties are fairly reliable, but do occasionally fail, leaving you with a board that’s partially bound to your bar, sometimes flapping about when you hit bumps. Then there’s the removal, which, sometimes, can be tricky because you don’t want to scratch your bar with a side-cutter or pair of scissors.
If you have to ride with a member board at your local trail and have more than one bike, or need to remove it to fit a race board, you have more challenges. Small challenges, but challenges nonetheless.
Put it this way, frustration isn’t far away when you have to mount a board to your bike with cable ties.
And it’s this frustration that motivated Kevin Taljaard, a committed mountain biker in Jeffreys Bay, to design and develop Number Board Mounts. It’s a relatively simple product that comprises two injection-moulded plastic mounts that you secure around your handlebar with a rubber O-ring and then attach your number board to the mounts with a plastic plug.
“I had actually been working on the design for a while, but it was during the lockdown when I was able to focus on it properly and finally get it out to the market,” says Taljaard.
He’s had a good reception to the Number Board Mounts already and is adding a larger O-ring option for those with larger diameter bars.
We found the Number Board Mounts relatively easy to mount. We say relatively because the plastic plugs are hard to push in at first. But this does mean your number board is very secure with no moving. Removing the plugs also requires some effort, but not enough to get you frustrated…
We never knew we needed Number Board Mounts until we started using them. Now we look at cable ties differently. Mostly, not at all. Not for number board mounting anyway. It certainly does improve the position of your number board too. It looks neater and is very secure.
Find out more or order your own here. www.nbmounts.co.za
