Cheap Ass Light Bar prototype

Mouse

Mouse

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At last, an affordable light bar for the R1200GS! :D Fabricated by trained monkeys from the finest Airfix grade mild steel, this little baby will hold a couple of lights and only wobble a little bit!

The finished product will not be that nasty colour, I shall powder coat it - as soon as I decide whether to use custard powder or washing powder.


Joking aside, this is my first attempt at mounting some driving lamps on my 1200. The photos show a partial mock up, because some of the real parts had been painted and were still wet.

Front view
01-Front.jpg


Side view
02-Side.jpg


Top view of the mounting brackets behind the headlamp. The small metal plates are clamped to the frame tube there with U bolts, with a bit of old inner tube for padding. :D
03-Top.jpg


View from underneath, showing the mounting brackets again. Believe it or not this contraption doesn't interfere with either the steering or the oil cooler!
04-Under.jpg


Let the piss taking commence :D
 
mmm! Messy old tool box, well used garage floor and truly DIY bodge of a light bar - that's more my style.
Glad to see not all Gs riders have garages cleaner and better equiped than our NHS operating theatres.
;) ;) ;)
 
TUNED IN said:
looks like top hat bar for mounting cables in Control Panel Backplates.:D
Click to expand...

Yes it is something like that, I scrounged it from the stores at work :D

Gonna look for something a bit stronger for the next version, probably.
 
Are you damn sure the forks don't bump into it? Particularly when they are compressed a bit?

I saw a professionally made lightbar for the R1200GS which had that problem and badly gouged the owner's forks when he was pushing the bike away from a gas pump after refilling. Needless to say, the owner was pissed, and was wondering if the vendor would pay for the damage. I haven't seen him since, so I don't know if they did or not...
 
Light bar

It seems a great pity that BM.. cant put lights that work on their bikes ! that way we wouldn't need all these extra lights and mounting bars + cable and relays etc. I wonder how much this puts back on their new 'LIGHTWEIGHT" models ?
Please can we have lights which allow us to see when driving at night, this goes for all manufacturers !
Mike :confused:
 
nice job - looks more like a CZ now - only not as nicely finished....... :rolleyes:


It seems a great pity that BM.. cant put lights that work on their bikes

the 1100 light was better than the 100GS and also better than the 1150GS

especially with a 120/80w thru' a relay :)

therefore - the 1100 is - again - the best.

big is beautiful - and yet ugly also.

form follows function
 
HMarc said:
Are you damn sure the forks don't bump into it? Particularly when they are compressed a bit?
Click to expand...

It's a good point, and something I haven't checked yet. As I said this is a prototype, I've got the basic design down so now I can tweak it until it's right.

Am I right in saying that the telelever causes the forks to move forwards as they compress?

On full lock, there's about 5mm clearance between the bar and the fork ... if this isn't enough I can probably trim the bar down a bit. On anything but full lock I doubt there's a problem.
 
Mouse
you knew you would get the piss taken and yet you posted the pics for all to see.... BRAVE Man.

Keep us posted with progress !! Give us all the ideas of whats possible :)
 
Good for you Mouse. There seems to be a natural assumption these days that any modifications have to be pieces of expensive jewelery from TT etc.

My bracket was made from the aluminium box section off a TV aerial, but I admire your built in adjustable features.:)

Tim
 
Nurse! He's out of bed again!!! :D :D :D


Perfect Mouse!

Can someone explain to me as I'm a bl**dy foreigner; what rules are there regarding lights in UK, when can what be turned on?

Coming from strictly policed Finland I know that parking lights (aka sidelights) are only allowed to be used when, aherhm, parked and that fog-lights are only allowed to be used when it's (surprise!!) foggy... etc etc

So, what's the do's n' don'ts in UK? :)
 
Originally posted by TheJoker

Can someone explain to me as I'm a bl**dy foreigner; what rules are there regarding lights in UK, when can what be turned on?
Click to expand...

Strictly speaking, the rules over here are something like this:

Fog lights - must be mounted a within a certain distance of the ground (ie not too high) and must only be used when visibility is less than a certain amount (100m I think).

Driving lights - must be wired to the main beam circuit, and must not be used so as to dazzle other road users.

In practice, as you can probably tell from the number of car drivers who use the foglights all the time, no one gives a stuff. No one's invented a roadside camera that detects inappropriate foglight use yet, and the police have better things to do.

As you can see from one of my photos above, I've mounted some fog lights on my engine bars. These are wired to the dip beam circuit, and so are technically illegal. But in the interests of self preservation, I don't give a stuff :D

The idea of the fogs on the engine bars, bar the way, is that the combination with the dipped headlight forms a very unusual triangular pattern of light, which is more noticable than a single headlight. The downside is that I get the occasional "helpful" car driver trying to blind me with the full beams, despite the fact that my fogs are pointed very sharply downwards and certainly won't dazzle anyone.

As they're used as marker lights (ie for me to be seen rather than for me to see by) I tried to get some lower wattage bulbs for em, but every shop assistant I asked "Have you got these bulbs in a lower rating than 55W" looked at me as if I was mad. A bit like people do round here :D

Enough waffle for now :)
 
Re: Light bar

chippelmike said:
It seems a great pity that BM.. cant put lights that work on their bikes ! that way we wouldn't need all these extra lights and mounting bars + cable and relays etc. I wonder how much this puts back on their new 'LIGHTWEIGHT" models ?
Please can we have lights which allow us to see when driving at night, this goes for all manufacturers !
Mike :confused:
Click to expand...

Mybe its me - but my lights do work. And they do help me see at night. Obviously not as bright as a car but then they don't turn night into day either.

Is it all the pipe smoke inside people's helmets or is the average age on here much greater than I thought? :D
 
Mouse said:
Driving lights - must be wired to the main beam circuit, and must not be used so as to dazzle other road users.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that clarification, Mouse. What does "driving lights" mean?
Is that the combination of Long (aka Main?) beam and dipped beam? Or one of them?

I'd like to have a better dipped beam, as that's the one I am forced to use the most as the roads I travel on in the dark are populated by "other people", so I can't use the main beam.
Having a combo-set with both dipped and main (?) beam would be best. :)

Cheers! :beerjug:
 
"Driving lights" usually means extra lights that are used in conjunction with the main beam - ie spotlights. I'm not sure if there's an official definition though.

For supplementing the dipped beam, I suppose you could get some "driving lights" and make sure they are angled so as not to dazzle other traffic. I'm not sure about the legal aspect of this.

Fog lights are generally useless at illuminating the road further than about 5m ahead, as they have such a wide diffuse beam the light just goes everywhere.

The lights on mine are wired like this:

Dipped beam = bike's dipped lamp + foglamps on crash bars

Main beam = bike's dip + bike's main + spots on lightbar

The fogs do make a small difference to the dipped beam, but no difference at all when on main, so no point having them on and draining the battery :)
 
Nippy Normans supply Touratech, Wunderlich, Desert Fox and many other makes of accessories.
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