Extra Light, part II

TL;DR The easy way, stealthy enough

This is a follow-up from the previous post about adding PIAA LPW530 lights to my Caterham. Alignment is described at length here.

With the car on hand, it took a whole 10 seconds and a wooden skewer to understand that the PIAAs wouldn't fit between the grille and the radiator. The space there is about 1 or 2 cm short.

Change of plan then. I considered fitting a bracket down from the large nut where the headlight bowls and indicator pods are attached. It looked like a real chore of a project, and I didn't want to mess up with the headlights alignment.

After much reflection, weighing various pros and cons, I went the easy way with a standard bracket made for that very purpose : a motorcycle clamp for 22-28mm tubes, made of cast aluminium.

I was worried about adding unsuspended weight (~500g on each side) and about vibrations. I reckon that being about 1/3rd of the way out, it should be like 150g extra, which is close to what I've saved with the short lug nuts; for reference the stainless steel trims on the winter wheels are 500g each... and the steelies are 2kg heavier (each) than my alloys. So that's that about that with weight concerns. With regards to vibration, the clamps are attached to the lower wishbones via rubber bushings. I've also seen videos from people attaching them right to the lower part of their motorcycle front fork.

Horizontal positioning was constrained by the need of remaining clear from the wheels when fully steered in, while keeping enough space from the car to allow for body roll and dive. I think the brackets clear the tyres by about 2 fingers.

As the wishbone tubes have a diameter just over 22mm, the clamps are a perfect fit and stay in place for good once tightened.

Wiring is routed to the rear along the small wishbone member along the body, attached below the tube with 3 zip ties. It then enters the engine bay from the wishbone opening. On the right-hand side, I made it follow the space frame, on top the horizontal diagonal member on top of the passenger footwell. From the left-hand side, I made it follow the horizontal beam where the horns are attached; reaching the wiring on the right-hand side.

The control box got 3mm adhesive foam on the back, and was secured on top of the diagonal member above the passenger footwell with a pair of zip-ties.

Power supply comes straight from the battery : ground was attached to an allen screw that secures the battery holder (with other ground cables), while positive was routed up to the positive terminal of the battery.

Control comes from a small (4x2cm) dual-switch enclosure that can either be attached to a handle bar, or have dual-sided tape slapped on the back. After much reflection, I decided to stick it under the high/low beams and flasher toggle switches. As it was getting dark, I temporarily routed the control wiring through the gas pedal bracket; not optimal in any way. I will re-route that through the main rubber grommet on the tunnel, near the firewall.

For extra stealth, I got a stripe of black tape to hide the shiny part of the reflectors, that would be hidden by the PIAA shrouds anyway; and got the misses hide the PIAA print on top of the lamps with black tape too. 

I drove to a dark street in the neighbourhood and made a quick job of fine-tuning the beam alignment.

After that we went for about an hour of night driving and could confirm that's a real nice addition to the car, visibiliy is really improved a lot. We came back home for supper (gotta feed those kids..), then back on the road for over 2 hours of night driving - in search of fog and frost in the Eifel, we got a bit of frost. 

We reached the highest point of Belgium and decided to put the half-hood on : freezing temperatures were mostly ok, but the wind there was a bit much for us. The way back home included a hop to Spa-Francorchamps, just because why not.

While I thought I could use the yellow lights to make me more visible on the road, they illuminate much further and higher than I thought. Nearfield is really excellent, but I didn't expect to also have so much light high and far. I'll see if people flash me if I drive with them during the day.

As for the white ones, they give me a pair of rather well focused beams that I adjusted so they cover an area similar to what the standard low beams provide. The goal is to compensate the void left when the high beams are active. The PIAAs do that perfectly.

They're so close to the ground that their grazing light reveals all the details of the road surface, with any bump, trough or pothole in full display. On the other side, they could suffer from stones hitting them head-on.

I got the misses go for a spin while I was looking at the car from afar, lost between fields, and it clearly gives some Monte-Carlo vibes. That's incredible how the car looks like a ball of light when everything is turned on.

One last thing : with 4 settings from the standard headlights (off, position, low, main) and 4 modes on the PIAAs (off, white, yellow, both), that makes for a total of 16 combinations.

See that in action in the video down below.