Cycling UK Forum

For my regular weekly/weekend rides I have a wedge bag attached to my seat-post and no carrier. I wonder if anyone knows of a way of attaching a rear battery light to the mudguard or the seat-stays. Most lights I am aware of seem to be designed to be attachable only to the seat-post. I don't recommend the Newboler wedge bag BTW. It's difficult to mount and difficult to access. But that's for another post to this forum.

Spanninga make a number of mudguard mounted lights, both battery and dynamo. Pixeo is a common model.

https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/rear-light-brackets/

On the stay how about something like:

which should be better than a thumbwheel on a strap.

On the mudguard I've several times used a cut-down Cateye belt clip, with two holes: one for the bolt and nut and one for the locating peg so that it doesn't swivel:

https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/search/?ter ... elt%20clip

Jonathan

bag should look like this when mounted


lamp can be mounted to bag or seatstay

cheers

As above, you can mount lights on seat stays.

I have a battery powered Bobbin rear light on a rear mudguard. It's cheap and cheerful - not super-bright and has only one mode (i.e. "on") but on the plus side I can't leave it at home on the shelf by the front door. Indeed, it was a "distress purchase" when I found I had left my rear light at home!

It's mounted where the reflector normally goes, and includes a reflector.



Cheapest I can find is this one for £6.97 delivered that looks like the same light, but a different brand https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/203168245626

Hi,
The trouble with mounting on the stay is that it's easy to get knocked.
Also on a tail bag it's difficult to get it to be pointing at the correct angle all the time.
and although it seems logical to mount it on the mudguard where the reflector normally it still gets knocked there too.

I'm not up-to-date with Cateye mounts but they certainly used to do a chainstay-sized clamp to fit their standard rear mount. The problem used to be finding a stockest or even somewhere that acknowledged their existence. I think they have replaced the range of different-sized clamps with a single one-size-fits-all adjustable band

I fashioned a bracket fixed to the mudguard using a bent L shaped plate (bracket) and fixing the lamp holder to it, leaving the seatstay clamp intact. I don't use it regularly - I put it there as a back-up to my rack-mounted rear dynamo lamp. Also, I sometimes use it when luggage is obscuring the dynamo lamp. I'm not sure that the bracket would last long with a light permanently mounted - I would worry about the mudguard stressing and splitting.

You can use an 'ahead' stem spacer, 1" or 1&1/8" and top cap.

Drill out one of the (two) rivets that mount the upper mudguard stay bridge and use a long bolt to secure spacer to mudguard. If your rear lamp is intended to affix to a seatpost, the rubber band will fit nicely around the stem spacer securely and out of harms way.

For example:

https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/headsets/24 ... 1-18-inch/
https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/headsets/we ... nch-black/

You will need to trim the bolt to length and secure with a 'nilock' nut.

The seatstay is a traditional mounting place, so the risk of getting knocked seems to have been thought small in the past. The Rixen item looks rather neat.

I assume that in the artisanal mudguard version the seatpost clamp has been left in place for some extra security around the bracket. Otherwise it can be taken off, and the remainder screwed directly to a bracket. The stresses on the mudguard presumably depend how far you can spread them with a form fitting plate on both side.

I have two of the Aldi silicon led lights on my seatstays one on each side.

Makes sense to me as a place to mount them.

I'd recommend one of these mudguard mounted lights (B+M Secula)
https://www.spacycles.co.uk/m12b0s39p44 ... -Permanent

There's also this mount that allows 50 mm rack-mount rear lights to be fitted to the mudguard.
https://freshtripe.co.uk/mud-guard-moun ... t-bracket/
(DIY of something similar is fairly simple, provided that you have a suitable chunk of aluminium)



Note that you should take care to get your rear light aimed pretty close to horizontally.

It's fairly common to see lights aimed upwards at around 10° or so, which looks great when checked from 2 or 3 m behind the bike, but because most LED lights have a fairly narrow beam, generally looks much dimmer when viewed from 50 m behind, which is about the distance you want a car driver to find your light obviously bright.
For example, I often see the Cateye LD610 mounted vertically on a seatstay. It looks good, and is low-profile enough to avoid knocks well, but on most bikes it's not possible to aim it correctly, as the mount pivot point isn't far enough out from the seatstay to allow the light to be tilted enough, without the lower end of the light hitting the seatstay.

andrew_s wrote: ... Note that you should take care to get your rear light aimed pretty close to horizontally. ....

^^^^ Yes ^^^^^^^

LED lights are very directional. Whatever arrangement you settle on, I'd recommend propping up your bike as near vertically as possible, or getting somebody to hold it - in the dark, of course - then check what it looks like from 50-100 yards down the road.

Hi
Mount the bag in a better way and you might have enough seat post to use, I've got two lamps on here although the bag is much smaller...

Regards
tim-b

Sadly not many quality rear lights are set up to attach to a rear guard.

I still use a Cateye TLAU100 in place of a the reflector as I referenced in a thread way back in 2008, you may still find one on ebay, I've just looked and found one easy enough.

You can always fettle many to the mudguard eye as well

For those needing new guards the Bontrager NCS Mudguard Set can take their own rear lights, the Flare RT is impressive, cheaper but still good is their Flare R; both USB-rechargeable, they have a front versions of both

I personally use the cheaper 'R' models as day time running lights in the summer and as helmet lights in the winter, their Blendr system mounts to some their helmets