Fine-tuning My Headlight Mount

Just before my full-time commuting, I had been working on a custom mount for my B&M Ixon-IQ headlight. I tried to create a simple, aluminum bracket. I'm all about functional aesthetics.

However, the guage used did not hold up to the vibrations and where I had notched clearance for the front brake cable a stress cracked formed. Darn!

Well, it was a good idea, just not the right materials. Given the vibration because the headlight was stuck at the very end, I would have had to make a support brace and that, aesthetically did not really appeal to me.

I have used Ram mounts in the past for things like mounting my GPS in the car as well as a video camera, so I looked at that as a solution. While a bit more, okay, a lot more $$ investment over my hardware store supplies, they are proven quite sturdy. I tried two different sizes and found the smallest, while more aesthetically pleasing, did not have the holding power for light.

 Here you can see the small form of the tiny mount, really cute, but the clamp section was not stiff enough and tightening the bolt bent the clamps halves without maintaining a tight enough fit on the end points.

Bouncing the bike caused the headlight to go droopy, dropping the light angle down too far.

I ended up using my "temporary" mounting solution, just refining how I attached the original mount bracket to my custom piece. I would love a bit smaller form factor, but this is quite sturdy and provides much better adjustments than my original homemade bracket.

Here is what the light looks like on the bike. I can easily reach the light to switch from off to on, change from low beam to high beam. You can also see why a standard handlebar mounting bracket would not work in my case, since the space is used by my MB-5's original thumb shifters. Plus, with the headlight a little lower, the light angle with ground is lower providing a bit better road condition definition (more shadows).