Placing front light when you also have a handlebar bag

[flocsy]

What are the best practices for placing the front light (one that usually would go on the handlebar) if I also have a handlebar bag? From the pictures I saw it looks like there might be hardly enough clearance over the "average placed" bag such that it might be OK for "being seen" but I would think that the bag does a huge shadow on the road and I wouldn't see much.

[RonS]

Nitto makes a lamp holder (RH-4) that bolts into the threaded boss on the fork to allow the use of a handlebar light mount. You could also just make one from a piece of broom handle with a hole drilled in it. This would only work if you are not using front panniers.

[martinf]

Position of the front lamp on my Raven Tour (utility). My other Raven Tour (touring) has a similar setup.

The extended front mudguard (copied from Danneaux) keeps most of the water and muck off the lamp when riding in wet weather, it also helps keep the upper parts of the front panniers a bit cleaner.

[flocsy]

This looks to be the best position for a front light, it's in the centerline and there's no obstacle in front of it as with the other solutions, where the light is on one side of the fork. However judged from the picture I think you have a dynamo light with it's default mounting.

What I am after is a way to mount a lamp like this: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002886304055.html It serves me well on my Saturday evening rides with friends, but that's a 2 hour ride with no handlebar bag. It looks like mounting it on the handlebar would make it not very useful because the bag would shadow most of the light, certainly if I would point it at a usual angle to see the road.

[RonS]

Looks like this would suit your purpose. Bolts to fork crown like a dynamo light and has a round bar to attach a battery light. If your handlebar bag is big there may not be enough clearance under the bag though.

https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/lighting-spares/busch-muller-light-bracket-for-fork-crown-254mm-mount/?geoc=CA

[Andre Jute]

I like this one --
https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/lighting-spares/busch-muller-iqx-headlight-bracket-black/?geoc=IE
-- because it allows you to juggle the space below a handlebar bag between light clearing fat touring tyres and mudguards and interference with the lamp by the bag, and solves both problems by giving you valuable millimetres in forward extension. Can be used all the way down to parallel to the ground or even downward sloping, useful if the mudguard doesn't get in the way, admittedly a rare occurrence, and the lamp itself has a tall foot.

BTW, the B&M bracket suggested by Ron is a copy of the universal BBB bracket for two thirds the price of the B&M bracket, both prices checked at SJS today.
https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/search/?term=BBB%20UniMount%20Bracket&geoc=IE
BBB stuff, of which I have quite a bit, is superb German engineering, often better than B&M gear which to me seems engineered down to a high-profit price for quite a bit of money.

http://coolmainpress.com/BICYCLINGbuildingpedelec6.html
shows me setting up bicycle lamps in a supermarket car park, with the reasons.* This bike has 60mm Schwalbe Big Apple balloons with extremely close-fitting P65 mudguards, so the photographs show probably the smallest dropout of light on the road one can achieve over fat touring tyres with a big handlebar bag and a bicycle-sized lamp without inducing lamp wobbles by using an inordinately long mounting bracket for the lamp. The bracket I prefer is glass-filled for strength and stability, and the one Ron suggested appears to be a more substantial design, presumably for stability without the heavy glass-filling. As always with bicycles, compromise is the name of the game.

Notice that B&M lamps, even expensive ones, should not be used without mudguards because they're open at the bottom and water can enter.

* I've long since removed the Fly being set up in the link from the bike and refitted my first series Cyo, which is a much superior lamp. That hotspot on the Fly (and the entire generation of B&M lamps to which it belongs) gave me an instant migraine every time I switched on the lamps; it quite overcame the strictly theoretical advantage of being able to assign the SON hub gennie to other tasks or even saving the dynamo's weight by fitting another wheel. Perhaps the current IQ lamps (IQ is the range to which the Cyos belong, the full name being IQ Cyo) are superior but I wouldn't know as I'm not replacing my first series Cyo or even selling my spare.

[martinf]

Looks like this would suit your purpose. Bolts to fork crown like a dynamo light and has a round bar to attach a battery light.

I've used something like this in the past on a bike with battery lamps. But the weight of an Ixon lamp with 4 AA rechargeable batteries combined with the length of the bracket meant that the lamp wobbled on rough tracks, so I went back to handlebar mounting for a stable beam, before fitting a hub dynamo and B&M Cyo fork-crown mounted lamp.

I had a similar problem with a Cateye LD1100 rear lamp (2AA rechargeable batteries) which broke a moderately long mounting bracket fixed to a mudguard on a lightweight bike without a rack. I sorted this using a stronger front lamp bracket made of steel, combined with a steel reinforcing plate under the plastic mudguard to prevent it from breaking the mudguard

This may be less of a problem with modern lightweight lamps with small Li-ion batteries.

__________________________________________________

I don't use handlebar bags, but sometimes use a traditional rain cape, so I prefer a fork crown mount for the front lamp and a rear rack mount for the rear lamp. One downside of a fork crown lamp are that the tyre and mudguard obscure the lower part of the beam, but this is only an issue if trying to avoid potholes and debris at very low speeds and has never really bothered me.

Another is muck and water spraying onto the lamp, this can be more or less eliminated with an extra-long front mudguard, not necessarily as long as the one in the photo in my previous post.   

[flocsy]

Good point about the weight. My lamp is very heavy. Although this is way more expensive but would solve the weight and the water splash issues and if mounted "upwards" then probably will be high enough to not to cast a too big shadow of the handlebar:
https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/lighting-spares/nitto-lamp-holder-260mm/
Another advantage is that the lamp's angle could be adjusted on the go.

[PH]

I run two lights, a STVZO compliant fork crown mount light so as not to blind on-comers and a blast-em handlebar light to be seen from space and scare the birds out of the trees. I would consider it unacceptably inconsiderate to use the second against approaching traffic, unless deliberately as a reminder for them to dip! It therefore needs to be in easy reach, on the handlebar.  I haven't found a satisfactory way to achieve this with a bar bag, the height required is more than the bracket linked above provides. In the end, the solution was simple, when I want to use the light, I put the bar bag somewhere else! You can do this permanently with the Thorn T-bar, though that didn't suit me.
For fork crown mounting, I like wire brackets, the B&M ones are designed for dynamo and some battery lights, they can be bodged to get most other lights to fit.  They come in a variety of sizes and are easy to cold set, once done so they stay there and are pretty much indestructible. I particularly like the Brompton style which can be run under a V Brake link wire. The IQ-X one Andre likes is as adjustable, I had one on the folder, it broke in transit, OK that's not everyone's usage, but it left me a bit stuck. An alternative to the B&M is this one from R&K, I haven't used it:

https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/lighting-spares/rixen-kaul-fork-mount-for-front-lights/

A couple of alternatives - If you're fitting a front rack, the hoop over the wheel is a great place, it cuts out the wheel shadow and is very protected from knocks while being out of the way of cables and other fittings, though it does collect some muck. I think the current Tubus racks come pre drilled for this.  Or any side fitting, rack or fork, if there's any hole you can fit a light to it, the shadow can be a bit irritating, but it'll still illuminate what you need to see. 
The ultimate answer would be to fit the light to the bar bag, a single unit, most bar bags bounce about too much for this to be good for anything other than a be-seen light. There is one exception, though the price is a deterrent
https://road.cc/content/review/route-werks-handlebar-bag-289419

[PH]

Perhaps the current IQ lamps (IQ is the range to which the Cyos belong, the full name being IQ Cyo) are superior but I wouldn't know as I'm not replacing my first series Cyo or even selling my spare.

I have an IQ-X dynamo light, it is the best beam of any dynamo light I've had, including the current SON Edelux II.  The IQ-X also has the most annoying electrical switch of any light in history, it turns on at seemingly random times and it's impossible to re-configure it to a simple on/off. 

[mickeg]

I have an IQ-XS on a couple bikes.  Cheaper than the IQ-X and has a metal housing, but not as bright a beam.  The less bright beam is good enough for me.  They make two versions of the IQ-XS, I wanted the version with metal housing, the other is not metal.  When I bought mine, they were rated at 70 lux, now rated at 80.  Not sure if they changed the innards, or if they just re-rated it.

I have one on my rando bike, first photo, I used an extra long Edelux mount and bent it to be straighter to put the light higher.  I did not use the fork crown for mounting, that is already in use for my brake cable hanger.  That is why I mounted it on my canti brake post.

I had an IQ-XS on my road bike, used an optional B&M mount for that, second photo.  But I moved that IQ-XS to my light touring bike after the photo was taken to use for my last tour.

The IQ-XS has been on a few times when I thought I had turned it off.  Not sure if it came on by itself or if it was user error on my part.  I am not sure about this but I think it is possible that it will come on automatically if the capacitor for the stand light is empty, as then the electronics might have forgotten if it was turned on or off.  On my tour, it usually stayed off in the morning when I started riding if it had been off during the prior day, but in this case the stand light capacitor was still charged.  I am not sure if the stand light capacitor will charge from the hub when the light is turned off or not.

The reason I want to turn it off at times is that I might want to use my USB charger instead to charge batteries, thus want the light off for more power for batteries.  Both bikes where I have an IQ-XS, I also have a USB charger wired into the circuit.

[flocsy]

I also saw this: https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/lighting-spares/rixen-kaul-fork-mount-for-front-lights/ which seems to be in the perfect spot, but then I thought that this together with my heavy light (it has a built in USB chargable battery and also can be used as a power bank, and it even rotates slightly around the handlebar sometimes) might be a bit wobbly with it's thin steal arm. Anyone used this mount?

[martinf]

I also saw this: https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/lighting-spares/rixen-kaul-fork-mount-for-front-lights/ which seems to be in the perfect spot, but then I thought that this together with my heavy light (it has a built in USB chargable battery and also can be used as a power bank, and it even rotates slightly around the handlebar sometimes) might be a bit wobbly with it's thin steal arm. Anyone used this mount?

No, but the product reviews at the bottom of the page you linked to say that it is only good for a lightweight headlamp

[mickeg]

If you get one like that, if you have a handlebar bag above it you might need to bend the mount to move the light down if the handlebar bag sits too low on the bike for a light on a mount like that.

Have you measured how much room you have between the tire or mudguard and the handlebar bag?  You should have some extra room, as handlebar bags can bounce a bit when you hit a bump.  You do not want the handlebar bag knocking your light out of aim.

Over the years I have used different lights on my Nomad Mk II.  At this time I have a Luxos U on it.  I bent the bracket to move the light lower.

[flocsy]

I don't have neither the bike nor the handlebag yet, just researching
Maybe for my 1st trip I'll just put my lamp on the handlebar. It should be good enough for "to be seen" for bad weather conditions during the day and I'm not planning to ride at night (though you never know how far the next shop/camping is...)
Tonight I tried to put my hand to where I assume the handlebar would obscure the light. It is not very good.... but the problem that seems to be more annoying than not seeing the road is that the light that was reflected from my palm (aka bag) is so strong that it will probably be a problem. One thing I can try is to use the horn of the Ergon GP5 grip, though I think it won't be pointing to the right direction. Or maybe I'll put electrical tape over the bottom part of the "light" and keep it over the bag.