I Can See Clearly Now
If racing with nearly another 100 cars over a 5.5km lap wasn’t hard enough, a good 2/3rds of the track is not lit. So to help the drivers (Support team say “pamper…..”) see at night, we add extra lights.
We have (thanks to Phil’s fabrication) removed the existing headlight fittings and replaced them with 13 spot LED lights and still keep the original headlight covers. To add extra illumination at night we fitted a light bar to the bonnet. Thus, our set-up used to be this:
However, for the 2017 season, the events organisers (Creventic) have changed the rules to include the following rule:
A LED-unit (up to approx. 20cm, at discretion of scrutineering) is considered as one headlamp.
So for 2017, the team has decided to install the 2 extra LED lights in the bumper (this also improves the aerodynamics slightly). So how did we go about installing the extra lights.
Step 1:
Take one complete front end:
Step 2:
Mount extra lights to the chassis.
Step 3:
Take one front bumper:
Step 4:
Mark up, cut out and fit bumper.
Strong wire mesh panels have been fitted in the cutouts to protect the extra LED lights.
The reasons for adopting this approach are:
- Makes the mounting more rigid, keeps the wiring neater and makes adjusting the lights more precise;
- If the bumper gets damaged (and not the lights) it is quicker to just change the bumper as we don’t have to worry about disconnecting and reconnecting lights;
- Another advantage is that if we enter shorter endurance races we can simply unbolt the extra lights:
