Preparing the bike - lighting

The pannier were one thing but there was still a long way to go before the bike would be anything like ready. Next item on the list was to do something about the lights. The more I look at the bike the more I appreciate the amount of thought that went into it back in Suzuki's design studio. No money but quite a lot of thought. For example, most original purchasers would have used it for commuting so a decent headlamp probably wouldn't be necessary- there'll be streetlights to show the way so any old headlight will do and a few yen can be saved. As long as other vehicles can see you that'll be good enough. But as you pick your way home slowly in the gloom you don't want cars crashing into the back of you, so they fitted a huge bright rear light. See what I mean about foresight, they really thought it through. I did wonder about swapping the lights over as the rear would probably have done a better job of lighting the road ahead but thought better of it. After all, who expects a motorcycle to be coming down the road backwards at 40mph.

I did look at whether I could rewire the lighting system to run some decent bulbs and concluded that, yes, it would be possible but it would cost more than I was willing to spend at this stage. Maybe later, when the bike had a few trips under its belt, I could justify it but not at this point when I had no idea whether I could even get to the end of the street on it. So I was going to be stuck with all of the original 6 volts slowly making their way through the bulb and scaring the photons into illuminating the front mudguard. To actually see the road I needed some extra lights and the power for them wasn't going to come from the bike.

Many years ago I ran a number of motorcycles with auxiliary lights. Many of them were totally useless (the lights that is) but a set of Cibie Oscar rally lights fitted to my Gold Wing would light up an empty road for over half a mile. Something like that on the bloop would be great but I'm not sure even the engine even put out enough power to light them never mind the generator. That kind of brute force approach was out, I'd need something more subtle. The off road bicycle world supplied the answer. There are lots of very high output battery powered LED lights available on the market for bicycles, many of which are far brighter than car headlamps or even the previously mentioned rally lights. They're small (think teacup size) and powered by lithium ion batteries about the size of a packet of cigarettes. Mostly the good ones come from the US, but unfortunately arrive together with eyewatering price tags and were way way beyond what I could contemplate spending. Good old free enterprise quickly solved that problem though. Chinese copies could be obtained on ebay for a fraction of the cost, so on the basis of nothing ventured, nothing gained I tapped my credit card numbers onto the screen and waited.

And waited, and waited... Eventually after six weeks (and many emails) a package arrived. When I plugged all the bits together and switched it on I must admit I was very impressed. This two inch diameter lamp was bright, really bright - brighter than our car headlamps by quite a bit. This looked like it might work. I made up some sort of mounting bar for the bike, replaced the bicycle orientated rubber band based clamp with something more substantial and worked out where to put the battery. I then decided for reasons of symmetry to buy a second one. That arrived from Hong Kong in five days, restoring a little bit of faith in the international postal system, and after a bit more rejigging of the mount it ended up on the opposite side of the bike. Both of them turned on together was just amazing, lighting up the road far more than any normal headlamps. The big problem had just shifted from one of running off the road in the dark to one of blinding people coming the other way and having them crash into me. I've not really solved that one yet.