I agree with the rant – it shouldn't be that hard to use your bike at night.
There actually are standards for lights. For example, all the German lights use an M6 bolt, and the bases are the same width. They mount to standard brackets that go on the fork crown. The bracket sandwiches the light, so you can adjust the light's angle by hand without loosening the bolt. As long as you use canti, V-brakes or discs, the fork crown is wide open. The rear light goes on the rear fender. Whether these are the best locations is a different matter, but if you have a German city bike and want to switch from a IQ Cyo to an Edelux, it's a simple swap. It's the same with derailleurs on our bikes. Yes, putting the derailleur on the outside of the rear dropout isn't ideal – the hanger tends to bend when the bike falls over – but they all are the same, and switching from Shimano to Campy is a snap today, unlike in the old days when Campy, Huret and Simplex each had their own dropouts with different derailleur hangers. We run into problems if our bikes aren't designed for derailleurs or lights. Then we have to get creative. And the results are often sub-optimal. Just like with cars, where the add-on fog lights tend to fall off, rotate or have unintended consequences (engines overheating because the lights block the radiator). The headlights that come with the car rarely have any issues... The beauty of a bike that is designed from the onset for lights is that you don't have to think about them. If they are well-designed, they are just there, ready to be switched on when you need them. Jan Heine Editor Bicycle Quarterly 2116 Western Ave. Seattle WA 98121 http://www.bikequarterly.com Follow our blog at http://janheine.wordpress.com/ On Thursday, March 13, 2014 12:20:52 PM UTC-7, Peter M wrote: > > +1 on that rant. Shouldn't have to buy a rack to make a light work. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
