DIY Video Camera mount for Audis

This will cost under $10 to make. Mine is not as pretty as some of the CNC machined ones... but since I don't drive around with a camera in the car all the time, I'm just concerned with functionality.

Step1: Gather supplies
2 - 2" 3/8 bolts
2 - washers
2 - wingnuts
1 piece of square metal tube
about 6" of 1/2 clear rubber hose
Things you will need to have...
Drill, vice, hack saw or air cutting tool, maybe a dremel as well.
Here are the supplies

Next remove your headrest and lay it on the tube so you know where to cut it.



Once you cut, clamp the 2 piece together in a vise. Then drill 2 holes in it for your 3/8" bolts.


Once you have the 2 holes drilled, bolt it together. Now put your headrest on it and mark where you need to drill. You need to drill right in the middle of the 2 pieces of tube.


Start drilling in between the bar stock. You will notice it is near impossible to do that without the drilling wanting to takes it own path of least resistance. Start the hole and then separate the 2 pieces of tube. What you want it to do is something like this

Now what I did was take my cut off tool and cut it out the rest of the way. A dremel or even a hacksaw could do it. Take you more time but it could be done.

Now in the next pic you will see I cut it just enough to make sure I wasn't too far off when I would clamp the headrest. We need to cut it some more. The rubber hose you bought will act as a bushing when you clamp the 2 pieces of tube together on the headrest.

Once you grind it out some more start trial fitting it until you get it something like this

You want it to not come easily together because you want it to squeeze the hose some so it will be snug and secure.

Take your hose and cut it into 2 lengths and then split it lengthwise. That way you can just slip the hose on the headrest with out removing it.

When you are finished it should look like this.

The last thing you may want to do is take a file and round off any sharp edges you made from cutting it.

Now mounting the camera can be done a few ways.  You can just drill a hole and run a nut and bolt through it or get yourself a compact ball head mount from a camera store or online.  One of the guys online did a little addendum to my write up you can see below. 

I was able to use this compact ball head camera mount with my mount.  The nice thing about this mount, it's cheap ($20) and you can use it other places as well.  I even mounted mine outside of the car for some great camera shots.  It also rotates/swivels/bends in just about any direction.  Very versatile mount.
You can get it from www.campmor.com by searching for "ultraclamp" or item # 82058

After reading over Rob's DIY camera mount. I decided to make one for myself.
I found some additional things that should be added to the directions.

You need to get a tripod head. (I got a SLIK for 30 bucks.)
Any camera store should have even cheaper ones for 20 bucks.

And a 1/4 x 1-1/4 bolt with a washer to mount the head.

For the headrest holes I wanted a clean cut (perfect circles). The whole - start the hole and finish it off with a hack saw or a dremel was not too appealing to me. Of course when you try to just drill straight through, the drill tries to go to one side to avoid the wall between the two tubes. Also, I wanted to make sure that there was a pretty big gap (at least a 1/4 inch) between the two tubes once they are fastened to the headrest.

So my recommendation is to use a 3/4 inch drill head (I couldn't get one that fit my drill so I went with a 1/2 and just circled around to make the hole bigger that worked) and space apart the 2 tubes in the vice so the center of the head doesn't try to hop around to avoid the wall. (I used a pencil and tightened the vice real tight to the pencil got flat). When you first apply the drill use some force to make sure the drill doesn't slide around.



But after that let the drill do all the work. Just make sure you're guiding but don't press down.


And voila! Nice and clean.


Also, I was worried about how the hose was going to stay in place on the tube. Trust me once you snap it in - it stays in place. No glue or string required.