I have been looking at the various places to mount LED spots and have now fitted them in a location that I have not seen used before. This position will not suit everyone but it gives another place for consideration.
My initial thoughts were:
Mounting off the brake-housing puts the spots roadside of the shock absorbers which isn’t ideal.
The design using a Tee-bar extension from under the headlights seems a very good option but it needs the frame to be modified.
I briefly considered reinforcing the screen with round stick-on GPS mounts front and back as load-spreaders for mounting holes through the screen but that idea fails because the screen changes angle as is moves up and down. I still really like this idea though and may well return to it if the current idea fails.
Body-panel mounting would trash any expensive (i.e. any) panels when the spots get clobbered.
However, when looking at the Tee-bar option it became apparent that there is a vacant space between the upper front forks.
Fork mounts for indicators (or headlamps) are easily sourced for the 53mm diameter of the upper fork tubes and with virtually no modification the Denelli style spots can be fitted to them leaving full adjustment for pitch and yaw.
The only slight (I hope) drawback is that the front fork travel gets reduced from the theoretical 105mm (4 inch) to the 75mm (3 inch) at which point the LEDs would hit the front mudguard but it is currently ‘so far, so good’. The photos show the spots as fitted.
I used the accessory plug under the handlebar centre cover to give a switched ignition trigger to the Innovv power distribution block and that switches the battery power to the spots.
My aim was to get higher visibility to other road users rather than improved road illumination so I have set them at a pitch angle that avoids blinding any oncoming traffic and they are on whenever the ignition is on. They could just as easily be triggered by the main beam power to give true spot use.
My initial thoughts were:
Mounting off the brake-housing puts the spots roadside of the shock absorbers which isn’t ideal.
The design using a Tee-bar extension from under the headlights seems a very good option but it needs the frame to be modified.
I briefly considered reinforcing the screen with round stick-on GPS mounts front and back as load-spreaders for mounting holes through the screen but that idea fails because the screen changes angle as is moves up and down. I still really like this idea though and may well return to it if the current idea fails.
Body-panel mounting would trash any expensive (i.e. any) panels when the spots get clobbered.
However, when looking at the Tee-bar option it became apparent that there is a vacant space between the upper front forks.
Fork mounts for indicators (or headlamps) are easily sourced for the 53mm diameter of the upper fork tubes and with virtually no modification the Denelli style spots can be fitted to them leaving full adjustment for pitch and yaw.
The only slight (I hope) drawback is that the front fork travel gets reduced from the theoretical 105mm (4 inch) to the 75mm (3 inch) at which point the LEDs would hit the front mudguard but it is currently ‘so far, so good’. The photos show the spots as fitted.
I used the accessory plug under the handlebar centre cover to give a switched ignition trigger to the Innovv power distribution block and that switches the battery power to the spots.
My aim was to get higher visibility to other road users rather than improved road illumination so I have set them at a pitch angle that avoids blinding any oncoming traffic and they are on whenever the ignition is on. They could just as easily be triggered by the main beam power to give true spot use.