Mounting twin lights

[RickH]

To get some nice clamps you could go for some 3TTT Tiramisu bar extensions, currently £3.99 at PlanetX (+£3.95 P&P but you can add other stuff to share the postage - or get your order to £50 & get it shipped free).

Note that they say 25.4mm but are probably actually 24mm (they were when I got some a while back), to fit the non centre bulge part of drop bars. the extensions bars are 22mm so you can substitute a length of straight bar if you wanted. You are looking at approximately 55mm centre-to-centre extension (~30mm gap between the 2 bars) with the clamps.

Rick.

[hercule]

What about this?
http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/mounty-space-bar-prod27156/
It comes in 31.8 variety, the clamp is aluminium and is of decent quality, and by the looks of it the bar is replaceable as well so you could cut any suitable length of old flat bar to fit your lights.

I have one of those (though it has a different brand name). Very solid and as commented above you can replace the bar with a longer one. I used mine to mount a twist shifter and it stood up to that use very well. If you bought a second one you could use the support to clamp the bar both sides of the stem for a doubly solid mounting.

[rmurphy195]

Needs someone to perhaps invent a device that just replaces a headset spacer maybe - in the same way as this bell mounting works http://www.londonbicycleworkshop.com/39 ... -bell.aspx

Ouch - just dawned on me how the Thorn ones work!

Carbon forks apart, my personal view is that it's a shame the fork mounting bosses no longer appear on bikes - this was a good spot for mounting a lamp, nice angle to pick up road imperfections, better still with one boss on each side. They had serrations to stop the mounting from swivelling under the weight of the old lamps with their D cells! I cycled with lamps mounted this way for many years, never a problem with muck appearing on the lamp.

[bogmyrtle]

When I was looking a couple of years ago I couldn't find a bar extender that would sit centrally. Everything on the market had one clamp with a bar that could be moved a bit to compensate. If you have bars that are shaped close to the stem, the extender doesn't sit straight without a bit of DIY.
I've not tried them but there are now bar extenders on e-bay that fix either side of the stem which I would think would be better balanced and should work below the bars.

bar extender

[PH]

When I was looking a couple of years ago I couldn't find a bar extender that would sit centrally. Everything on the market had one clamp with a bar that could be moved a bit to compensate. If you have bars that are shaped close to the stem, the extender doesn't sit straight without a bit of DIY.
I've not tried them but there are now bar extenders on e-bay that fix either side of the stem which I would think would be better balanced and should work below the bars.

bar extender

That's basically what I've done with the M-Weave one, two clamps and one bar.

[Raph]

Same here; on all my bikes I have the M-wave extender thing as mentioned above, permanently fitted with two clamps, one either side of the stem. It meant buying two extenders in each case, but the single clamp is no good to hold two lights, it just flexes and wobbles about. With two clamps it's pretty solid.

Onto that I clamp a minoura extender - but beware, there are different types, I gave up on the earlier type:
http://www.evanscycles.com/products/min ... m-ec009105,
cos it was terrible, flexed and fell apart, in favour of this one:
http://road.cc/content/review/43453-min ... p-sgs-300m
which is very solid. Might seem a bit silly using two extenders, BUT it means I don't clamp the metal clamp directly to the bar, and I can tighten the M-wave extender as much as I like without damaging the bar as it has rubber inserts on plastic clamps, and the minoura hangs vertically so doesn't slip when hitting big bumps.

Also... I don't have to fiddle about avoiding the brake and gear cables to get the lights directly on the bar itself. I've been using this system for a few years now, works a treat. The whole minoura unit with both lights comes off as one and I don't lose the angle between the dipped and main lights.

Note there's quite liberal use of bits of inner tube, helps to stop clamps slipping.

Depending what your headset/setup is, this:
http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/thorn-access ... prod11040/
is the most solid by far. I have this on a tandem where there are lots of spacers above the headset so there's plenty of space under the bar. And obviously no good if you have a quill stem.

[Raph]

PS I got a job lot of that M-wave extender for about £4 each (can't remember where from sadly), I don't think I would have paid £9.61 twice for each setup (as in the link above). If you keep a lookout I'm sure it'll turn up cheaper than that.

[AlanW]

The bracket that replaces a headset spacer look ideal, but its a bit to permanent for my application to be honest. During the week I use my lights to/from work, but come the weekend all the lights plus the saddle bag are removed.

The dual M-Wave bracket seems like a strong alternative, that said the one from China seems like a worth while punt and it works out cheaper too....