A while back I reviewed a computer/light system by Lezyne, and there were quite a few things I really liked about the setup. Very high up on that list was the mounting system they were offering.
It turns out that this system is manufactured for Lezyne by F3 cycling. While the version of this mount sold by Lezyne is only compatible with the Lezyne family of head units, there is good news for the Wahoo/Garmin/Karoo users out there; all the same features (and more) are available to you, too, in the form of the – ahem – F3 FormMount.
Retailing at $59.99, the FormMount is a carbon composite structure that attaches to your stem via the faceplate bolts. It comes complete with Garmin and Wahoo “puck-style” inserts, 2 sets of stainless steel M5 bolts, black aluminum spacers that fit over the shaft of the bolts, a gray spacer/accent stripe, and all the bits and bobs necessary to put the whole thing together, including a stiffening brace to help with alignment of the mount and increase stability when mounting heavy computer/light/camera setups.
The manufacturer’s claimed weight is 24.89g (sans brace) and my sample was pretty much dead on target.
F3 offers a range of accessories for the mount, including a GoPro style camera/light mount, extra short arms for use with smaller computers, accent spacers in a range of colors and titanium bolts in both raw titanium and black finishes in 35mm and 40mm lengths. Extra spacers come included with those screws.
The FormMount attaches to your bike by way of the stem mounting bolts, which are replaced with extra long versions that now secure both your bars and your mount to the stem.
Two hockey stick shaped arms connect to those bolts, with small aluminum spacers ensuring that they correctly interface with the stem. The mount itself is comprised of three parts. The top part accepts a puck computer interface that can be swapped out for different brand requirements or for replacement due to wear. The middle part is a spacer, and the bottom part has tracks formed in it to accept the arms of the mount. The whole sandwich clamps together to fasten things in place via 2 small screws using a 2mm hex wrench. The mounting pucks are held in place by a single screw (for Wahoo) and 2 screws (Garmin), these also fastening by way of a 2mm wrench.
The arms of the mount swivel, and the mount will thus adjust to fit most 4-bolt faceplate stems with M5 bolts that have parallel axes and bolt centers from 16mm to 41mm. This isn’t every stem on the market, but it’s a lot of them!
Not only do the arms of the mount swivel, but the mount slides fore and aft on them so you can adjust the length of the mount to accommodate different size head units, and snug whatever unit you use right in tight to the front of the stem regardless of whether you’re running a large head unit,
or a small one.
That’s still the long arms on the mount with the bolt. You can get things even tighter with the optional short arms.
There are detents molded into the tracks to help keep the assembly square and parallel through the range of adjustment. That’s a nice touch.
There are a lot of nice touches to this system. Take the light/camera mount accessory, for example. Like the rest of the mount body, it’s made of carbon composite. F3 don’t make the mistake of trying to cut threads into this stuff for the mounting bolt, or of bonding in a threaded insert. Instead, they use an external, easily replaceable acorn nut. If you’ve stripped out a GoPro style mount trying to keep a light to stay pointed in the right direction on another mount (and I sure have) you’ll appreciate the detail. There’s even a stop molded in on the nutward side to keep said nut from spinning during installation.
There’s a lot more going on here than with your typical “bolt it on to the handlebar” type computer/light mount, and the result is a mount that offers tremendous versatility and adaptability. Are you looking to mount a small, race-oriented head unit like a Wahoo Bolt close in to the stem to minimize the profile of your front end? Game on. Running a big ‘ole Roam or Garmin 1030 and a GoPro on the front of your gravel bike? Just add the optional Light/Camera mount and maybe the bridge tool, and you’re covered.
This “one ring to rule them all” aspect of the FormMount is fairly unique in the world of computer mounts, but for many applications the use of the stem bolts to secure the mount is an even bigger highlight. Finding the real estate to add a computer mount to an aero profile bar, or weaving your way through shift housing, hydraulic hoses, and remote shift switches trying to get a computer mount in place are things you just don’t have to worry about anymore. Everything mounts with zero impact on your bar space.
It winds up looking pretty darn clean from the front as well.
You don’t get all these pluses without a downside, though. There’s a fair bit of added complexity to this system compared to most of the mounts on the market. There are lots of moving parts, and some really tiny screws holding everything together. Having said that, I have put some fairly significant miles in using the FormMount, all of them with a full size head unit and a camera or light on board and none using the stiffening brace. Most of these miles have been on my gravel bike, and a lot of those have included some pretty burly terrain. In the time I have been testing the FormMount, I have broken two other computer mounts that were in for testing, plus the frame of the bike I was doing most of the testing on. The FormMount has survived all of this unscathed; nothing loose, no wobbles, no problems. I do find myself checking those tiny little screws on a regular basis, though, just to be sure.
My second area of concern is even more speculative. When you use this mount, you’re hanging a bunch of stuff off a fairly long lever that’s secured by the bolts that hold your bars in place. What happens if you whack the heck out of that lever arm, say - for example - in the process of crashing your bike? It seems to me that just might be the kind of thing that could turn a fairly innocuous incident into a call home for a ride. Hopefully you’re somewhere you can get a ride if this happens! I’ve been keeping a couple of extra stem bolts in my seat bag, just in case.
Those (speculative!) caveats aside, I really have nothing but good things to say about this product. It’s light, it’s incredibly adjustable, it looks cool in a Terry Gilliam’s Brazil kind of way, and it’s the mount I’m using to hold my own computer on my own bike these days.
