Front light placement options

NEvans · Post by **NEvans** » 20 Feb 2015, 1:23am

We are looking to put a front light on the wifes bike. It would be the main light onto the road while backed up by a small helmet light. The bike is a Galaxy tourer of which we have fitted a large handlebar bag meaning no space on the handlebar itself. Potentially it could go on the brake / mudguard mount point (although not going as far as a dynamo front wheel). But it is the smallest frame so very little space to mount it.

Are there decent lights which fit onto the forks or onto the front of the bar bag? Or best going for a decent battery version of a brake mount light.

531colin · Post by **531colin** » 20 Feb 2015, 7:48am

http://www.spacycles.co.uk/products.php?plid=m2b0s169p1102

honesty · Post by **honesty** » 20 Feb 2015, 7:52am

Depending on the bag mount you can get accessory bars that fit to the mount and give usable space above the bag. You can mount lights on these, though obviously you do end up with a bar bag shadow directly in front of the bike.

Heltor Chasca · Post by **Heltor Chasca** » 20 Feb 2015, 7:59am

I have a bar bag so I fitted my lamp onto the front rack. On a Surly rack you can fit to the front or rear, but I felt the front fitting was in a vulnerable position and looked odd. No shadows from the bag or cables and as you steer so does your beam.

Tangled Metal · Post by **Tangled Metal** » 20 Feb 2015, 8:52am

You can get some lights that use a rubber bad to attach to any tube shaped part of your bike. I use one for my rear on the seatpost but it came with smaller bands so you could attach it to seat stays. I know there is a front light version of the Cateye xlite but it is only a light to be seen not to see by, not bright enough but the wide angle of visibility on these front and rear lights are amazing.

I think you can get brighter lights that attach in similar ways that you could attach to the forks. I also think you can get bars that attach to the stem and go up and forward so you can attach more kit on the bars like computers, lights,etc. Topeak I think do them but I am not sure if they can be adjusted to avoid the bar bag. I did think one of these sorts of fittings would be good to get the lights further forward and the light out of your angle of view, I sometimes found that I'd have my lights in my eyes if I tucked down a bit so thought about these for moving the lights further away.

Vantage · Post by **Vantage** » 20 Feb 2015, 8:57am

I'd be wary of fitting a light to the fork legs. The reason being, as I discovered before getting my dynamo, is that at certain viewpoints from the motorists seat, the front tyre can obscure the light. I narrowly missed being hit on a roundabout because of this.
Imo, whatever you do, keep any light above the front tyre and mudguard and/or keep it central. It's useless if it's unseen.

Brucey · Post by **Brucey** » 20 Feb 2015, 9:56am

I'd second that; if nothing else in truly dark conditions the shadow of the wheel that is thrown by a fork-blade mounted lamp drives me nuts.

Attaching a lamp to the bar bag itself may seem like a good idea but it is usually difficult to aim and then thrashes about as you go down the road.

As usual that nation of bar-bag obsessives, the French, have a solution to this; they often use a robust front mudguard (one with a front stay) or a small front carrier, and the lamp attaches to that. A suitable mudguard will take a dynamo light (or one with a remote battery pack) but a small front carrier will take almost any kind of lamp. Normally there is a space beneath the top of the carrier at the front.

This kind of carrier works well on a smaller bike and helps to support a bar bag too.

This is an inexpensive aluminium version
http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/alloy-front-carrier-cantilever-boss-mounting-black-alloy-prod14021/

If you don't have canti-bosses for the lower mounts then 'p' clips round the forks can work OK; just be sure to use a layer of rubber between the clip and the fork; this should prevent slippage. Many such racks have a mount built-in to accept a lamp.

cheers

beardy · Post by **beardy** » 20 Feb 2015, 10:08am

One of these on the fork crown bolt.

http://www.rosebikes.co.uk/article/b--m ... aid:409690

It is meant for the rather good Ixon IQ but I think some Cateyes fit on the same mounting.

http://www.rosebikes.co.uk/article/b--m ... aid:243308

and at that price the Ixon IQ is excellent value!

For something with rather stunning power there is the latest version.

http://www.rosebikes.co.uk/article/b--m ... aid:703598

Edit: wrong link.

Tangled Metal · Post by **Tangled Metal** » 20 Feb 2015, 10:11am

Vantage wrote:I'd be wary of fitting a light to the fork legs. The reason being, as I discovered before getting my dynamo, is that at certain viewpoints from the motorists seat, the front tyre can obscure the light. I narrowly missed being hit on a roundabout because of this.
Imo, whatever you do, keep any light above the front tyre and mudguard and/or keep it central. It's useless if it's unseen.

One each side???

oldstrath · Post by **oldstrath** » 20 Feb 2015, 10:20am

beardy wrote:One of these on the fork crown bolt.

http://www.rosebikes.co.uk/article/b--m ... aid:409690

It is meant for the rather good Ixon IQ but I think some Cateyes fit on the same mounting.

http://www.rosebikes.co.uk/article/b--m ... aid:243308

and at that price the Ixon IQ is excellent value!

For something with rather stunning power there is the latest version.

http://www.rosebikes.co.uk/article/b--m ... aid:243308

The Premium (the latest version) is here
http://www.rosebikes.co.uk/article/b--m ... aid:703598

Not sure I'd call it 'stunning', but probably the best on offer if you want k-marking?

Brucey · Post by **Brucey** » 20 Feb 2015, 10:29am

^ the fork crown is often a great place to mount a light, but not on the OP's wife's bike; it is a small frame and there is a bar bag.

cheers

Heltor Chasca · Post by **Heltor Chasca** » 20 Feb 2015, 1:42pm

Brucey wrote:^ the fork crown is often a great place to mount a light, but not on the OP's wife's bike; it is a small frame and there is a bar bag.

cheers

Quite right. I've got a 50cm frame and it wouldn't work. Smaller bag would I think...hc

gregoryoftours · Post by **gregoryoftours** » 20 Feb 2015, 7:26pm

If the bar bag uses a klick fix bracket (or ortleib, which is replaceable with kf) you can use one of these -
http://www.bike24.com/p222604.html
It looks like you'd probably need a light that adds a bit of height to this bracket to clear the bar bag though, and as other people have said the bag will cut off the patch of road immediately in front of you, but if it's primarily a light to be seen by it should be ok.
Here's an old thread on the same subject -

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=71801

CJ · Post by CJ » 20 Feb 2015, 7:49pm

Vantage wrote:I'd be wary of fitting a light to the fork legs. The reason being, as I discovered before getting my dynamo, is that at certain viewpoints from the motorists seat, the front tyre can obscure the light. I narrowly missed being hit on a roundabout because of this.

I very much doubt that was the reason for your near miss. A bicycle front wheel, especially whilst circling a roundabout, does not maintain the same orientation for long enough for the tyre to obscure the lamp sufficiently consistently from any angle for this to be a plausible excuse for the usual dozy driver (who isn't really looking for anything other than other cars) except by an incredibly improbable fluke.

By the way, I don't mean unjustly to pillory "the usual dozy driver". Cycling is at a such a vestigial level in this country that sometimes when I'm cycling I forget that anyone else might be doing the same, fall into the trap of not really looking for anything other than a motor vehicle and once or twice have almost (but never quite) pulled into the path of another cyclist.

Brucey · Post by **Brucey** » 20 Feb 2015, 8:24pm

for my sins I also ride motorcycles sometimes. One of the things that can be a real life-saver is to look out for other traffic coming onto roundabouts at the next entrance/exit. If there is a car about to enter the roundabout ahead of you then you need to pay very careful attention to it.

It happens surprisingly often that another vehicle is approaching the roundabout at 90 deg to your path and its speed may match yours almost exactly such that you remain in the blind spot (typically behind the windscreen pillar of a car) for long enough to be missed. Between this and the fact that a motorcycle is rather small and the driver probably isn't looking out for you anyway, you can find yourself in a bad situation pretty quickly.

In the daytime you can see if the other driver should see you and similarly if he has seen you, he should react accordingly. In the nighttime neither thing is so obvious, but hopefully motorbike headlights will be less easily obscured in any blind spot. [Cycle lights though... nah. They are going to be obscured rather easily by comparison.]

When getting a shift on in the daytime, I've had the exact same thing happen on a bicycle, too. You shouldn't have to ride so defensively but at the end of the day you are vulnerable whenever you are on two wheels. To my consternation a few years ago I found myself in danger of causing such an accident for a while when I'd just bought a new car; the new car had much thicker windscreen pillars and I found it was easy to lose a motorcycle behind them.

These days I am becoming less and less keen on motorcycling because most motorists simply are not paying attention to what they are doing. Between the sat nav and the smart phone they are badly distracted much of the time. I'd ban 'em, or make them so that they wouldn't respond at all to new commands when the vehicle is in motion....

cheers

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