Dynamo Lights

SEe these albums and the attachment for some fancy ideas for a ring commutator, but it touches on steerer drilling.

That's what I fancy doing on my slow tourer/audax bike. Fiddly, but nice.

I'm hoping the coax cable stuff makes a bit more sense once I have it in hand as it's all seeming a bit double dutch right now.

My usual method of cable stripping is rolling it along a stanley blade, take it that ain't gonna cut it!

Worst comes to the worst I have a mate who makes cables for the tv and film industry and I know he deals with coax so will probably be able to help me out.

I think in under the DT on the lug, down the DT, over the bb, into the chainstay out at the end and into a light mounted to the mudguard eye.

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Sounds like the best idea, if you're okay drilling your paint at those locations. If drilling through the Lug there should be enough material to not worry too much about stress on the tubing.

I have a jtek to sell... do you a bargain...

Bugger, placed the order last night.

Looks like I’ll need to post the lx hub back too as they are saying it’s too late to cancel. Oh well.

What's the details and what's the bargain, I could be interested.

LX is fine with a rear light. My son uses one with b+m lights, rear light was unfeasibly bright at 200 yards as he rode off into the murk of his 7am last ride to school of the year.

Cancel the Jtek order instead!

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/356932/?offset=25#comment15693109

see here

Another great photo album with ideas for the headtube connection.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/48950170@N03/albums/72157713856318003

If I leave my AliExpress special (light) on it seems to flash rather than build up capacity, until I switch it off and on. Indicative of something about to go wrong or is this normal?

I think I fixed this - looks like it might have been caused by a short on the rear light cable when it was damp (which I shortened as I'm not using). I isolated the cables from one another properly and it doesn't seem to have any issues now.

Nice

I think you are mad to drill into the underside of the HT-DT joint area, lug or not. On another forum and the facebook framebuilders group there have been recent threads showing lugged bikes failing just behind here, cracks seemingly starting in the stressed area between the top and bottom points of the lugs. In one example a hole for a dynamo wire contributed to the failure, I think it was drilled on the side of the DT.

Also, I think drilling so close will require you to have some arrangement to allow for the fork turning, e.g coiling the wire in a pigtail in a tight area between fork crown and tube. Lastly, I've never liked these low mounting points for light which seem less visible than a higher mount and also more liable to be damaged by pedals etc of other bikes.

Mind you, my bikes are covered with zipties or dynamo wires wrapped around frame tubes/cable housing as a result so the aesthetics are maybe not my strong point :) I wrap the rear upwards around the brake cable then a pigtail over to the top tube

Hmmm. That’s not good.

Well I have a hub (2 actually), son co ax cable and bumm lights on their way.

I can set the front up straight away and continue weighing up the options for the rear. Through the steerer and along the toptube is a definite possibility.

Screwing the paint up brazing some reinforcement on might not be the end of the world either. I just fitted a fork with fucked paint so it’d be on theme at least.

Here is a link to one of the failures highlighted on the facebook group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Framebuilders/permalink/2067298950073023

Notice that it is in the non-lugged section. The OP said that this was a factory drilling.

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That area of the DT is fairly highly stressed- hence why some frames have a gusset there. Apart from cracks at holes, you often see failures initiating at the edges of the lugs or at the corners of DT shifter bosses.

That’s totally giving me the fear.

I’m actually leaning toward thinking that simply zip tied to or spiralled around the top tube would look quite cool. Like, a ‘I’m too cool for all that internal shit, I just want lights that work so I can ride my bike’ kinda vibe.

I don't want to suggest it's immediate fiery death - 'often' is a relative term - but especially if you're a heavier or more powerful rider, IMO internal wiring is best left to the wizard-level constructeurs (Weigle, Singer, etc.) with brushes on the steerer, SON-SL hubs, etc.

Thanks, disc is no good for me. Glws

Hopefully you can make yours a bit neater than this, which is temporary until I make a proper connection and heatshrink on wire from the light.

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I'm hoping the coax cable stuff makes a bit more sense once I have it in hand as it's all seeming a bit double dutch right now.

My usual method of cable stripping is rolling it along a stanley blade, take it that ain't gonna cut it!

Worst comes to the worst I have a mate who makes cables for the tv and film industry and I know he deals with coax so will probably be able to help me out.

I think in under the DT on the lug, down the DT, over the bb, into the chainstay out at the end and into a light mounted to the mudguard eye.

If you're using Coax, might I suggest looking at the stick-on Di2 guides before you bust out the drill. They can make a setup look really clean without risking your frame.

I've put about two years of all-weather commuting in Seattle on my setup and they've stayed put without issue.

Actually just bought some of them tonight.

Was thinking I might need replace whatever adhesive they come with with some vhb type tape but that should be easy enough.

Was thinking I might need replace whatever adhesive they come with with some vhb type tape but that should be easy enough.

Why's that?

+1. If the frame is clean and haaawt, the Di2 tape sticks pretty well

Just that I’d read some of the reviews of them and they were saying the adhesive wasn’t very good.

I reckoned that if people were struggling to get them to stick to shiny flat paintjobs then there wasn’t going to be much hope for me.