Fitting headlight to race fairing

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c7l
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Fitting headlight to race fairing

Post by c7l »

Hello All!

I'm thinking of buying a track bike and converting it back to the road. Managed to figure out answers to most of the questions except how to fit a headlight into a race fairing.

The bike comes with a fairly high quality (and sprayed up) glass fibre race fairing with no holes for fitting a headlight. I'm toying with the idea of fitting a neat little aftermarket unit off to one side but wondered if anybody on the forum has attempted this before?

Firstly drilling a perfect circle on a sloped glass fibre surface will be a challenge but then how do you fit a 'universal' headlight and will the guys at the MOT shop pass it?

Any suggestions gratefully received. Or if it sounds all too difficult I'll swap some nice front race fairings for road versions!? winks
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RedexRobB
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Re: Fitting headlight to race fairing

Post by RedexRobB »

Theres a couple of headlight fairings on ebay at the moment, so have a look and see what they go for, although they dont come up very often!

If a universal headlight passes an ordinary MOt then you should be fine.
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Re: Fitting headlight to race fairing

Post by masterofinsanity »

Leanne_zxr did this to hers may be worth dropping her a pm?
Don't forget people there is more to the zxr400 than this forum... check out www.zxrworld.co.uk also.
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deviant
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Re: Fitting headlight to race fairing

Post by deviant »

A few comments...

I've bought a cheap nasty glassfibre fairing for trackdays, and am planning on making it "just about legal" to ride to the track as I don't have a trailer - so cheap aftermarket lights, quick release plate, etc.

In terms of what lights to use, I bought a pair of headlights for one of these off ebay

Image

They are twin lights which can be separated if you didn't want to mount them side by side. And of course they are perfectly legal in terms of dip patterns, etc. I don't expect they will be particularly bright, but I haven't tried hooking them up yet. The scoot is a Suzuki AY50 btw.

As far as where to put your lights goes, the short answer seems to be that assymetric lights (endurance racing style) will not pass an MOT. That's not really a problem for me as I'll still have the standard kit to use most of the time, so I might well do it anyway. But if it's your only fairing/lights you probably need them to be MOT-worthy. I think the best thing to do would be to get some twin lights as above or from another source and put them in as they are on the H model - symmetric and side by side.

Or of course you could fit standard lights...

For cutting holes in the front fairing, what I was planning to do was wrap a bit of card around the headlight so you end up with a cardboard tube the same diameter as the light. Then trim bits off the end of the tube until it fits the curve of the fairing where you want the light to do, and sticks straight out from the front of the fairing. You should then be able to draw round the tube to give the shape of hole you need to cut. I hope this makes sense.

you will need to either make/modify a front fairing bracket to support the lights, or modify the fairing itself to add some lugs to screw the lights to. I'm happy to make suggestions once you know what lights you are going to use.
In the garage:
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1978 Suzuki GS400 - PROJECT RETRO RACER!
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c7l
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Re: Fitting headlight to race fairing

Post by c7l »

Thanks for all your answers guys, very helpful. I'm either going to go down the route of cutting a hole the same shape as the original headlight and go the standard route.

Or I like the idea of adapting a streetfighter bikini fairing (under £40 from gericke, demon tweeks, fleabay etc..) to fit but this would of course require a specially made bracket and some talented cutting!.

Does anybody have a picture of the standard bracket used to hold the normal headlight as i'm pretty sure the bike lost this bracket at the time of the track conversion.

Cheers,

Chris.
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Re: Fitting headlight to race fairing

Post by deviant »

btw we are talking about an L model here aren't we? I've been assuming so so far.

The L model headlight screws into lugs moulded into the inside of the front fairing - ie if you take the fairing off, the headlight comes away with it rather than staying with the front subframe. You might find it difficult to replicate this on a race fairing unless you are handy with fibreglass. I think the H model is the other way round - you can take the fairing off and the lights stay where they are. I may be wrong on this one.

I'm going to take mine off some time this week, so I'll get some pictures of an L model one for you.
In the garage:
Kawasaki ZXR400 L3 - shiny
Suzuki DR800 - bouncy
1978 Suzuki GS400 - PROJECT RETRO RACER!
Kawasaki GPz500S - for sale soon
Honda CG125 BR-J - in bits
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