Most of us have been there before. Whether it’s your house, at a race, or at the trail head, you lean your bike against something for just a second. Turn your back, and the bike mysteriously starts moving scratching your car’s paint or damaging the wall in the process. To address that very problem, two companies an ocean apart have some unique solutions.
Started by a local ripper on both bicycles and dirt bikes, Motomat is all about protecting the finish on your vehicle. The simple idea is as cheap as it is effective, which is to say it works pretty well for not a lot of money…
No stranger to traveling the country with a dirt bike, mountain bike, or cross bike in his van, founder Chris Douglas thought it would be handy to have something he could slap on his vehicle to protect the paint. Granted, there are a lot of different ways to park your bike at an event, but we see bikes leaned up against cars all the time though it apparently even more common with motos. The Motomat is a large 5 x 7″ magnet on one side, while the other side is covered in 4mm of very slow rebound EVA foam.
Simply slap it on your car, rest the handlebar against it, and the foam deforms around it doing a surprisingly good job of holding it in place. For added security you can rest the rear bike tire against the car tire like above, and the bike isn’t going anywhere.
If you get creative, you could use the Motomat for road bikes as well, though you will likely need two of them to cover all of the contact points. The bonus though is that if you have two Motomats, they attract to each other for easy storage which helps keep the magnet surface clean. Note that Motomat recommends cleaning the paint surface before applying the magnet which is why my salt lick of a car above has one clean spot. Available in black or white, a single Motomat sells for $9.99 and can be purchased directly through Motospec Inc.
Across the pond, Cyclogical is onto a similar idea with a different approach. When we first saw their product at the Eurobike Scottish development booth, it was called the Stumpy. Along with the name change, the Gripster now features a small magnet in the center to expand its use.
For drop bars or flat bars, the Gripster provides a grippy connection between the end of the bar and whatever surface it’s leaning against. That could be an interior painted wall for protection of the wall, an exterior concrete wall for protection of the bike, or like the Motomat, the side of a car to protect the paint. I will say though that since the Gripster uses a small, hard magnet, it did leave more of a mark on the side of the car than the Motomat did.
Funded through Kickstarter, the simple rubbery device fits almost every bike and sells for £9 (about $14.50).
