Every bike should have a headlight, or at least have a place to mount one. Even if you never plan to be on the road after nightfall, a single flat tire—or an afternoon appointment that runs over—can still leave you in the dark. I carry a small but very bright LED light for just such emergencies. It makes a good flashlight, too. But it wasn’t easy to find a place to put it. My handlebars are already crowded, what with the bracket for my bar bag, the mount for my GPS, and my cyclometer. Moreover, the bar bag rises high about the bars, effectively blocking any bar-mounted light. So I bolted a stubby post to my left fork blade, and mounted my light bracket to that.

It worked, after a fashion, but the light was really too low. So when I finally got around to installing a front rack, I was determined to move my light up onto the rack. There was a small problem, though: The rack’s rails aren’t very thick, and the light bracket is designed to clamp over handlebars. What to do? Apply a little lateral thinking, that’s what! And with a little help from an old inner tube, that’s exactly what I did. Here’s how it went:

Three or four wraps was all it took. I used electrical tape to anchor the cut end of the tube to the rack. Then I just kept the tube under moderate tension as I made the wraps. When the resulting roll was large enough, I cut off the excess—and used another length of tape to keep the loose end from unraveling.

At first, I clamped the light bracket to the rubber mount so the light would be above the rack…

…but I soon changed my mind, after I realized that any cargo could interfere with the light. Luckily, repositioning the bracket was the work of a moment:

Now I’m ready to light up the night, even with cargo on the rack.

There’s no end to the uses for old inner tubes, is there?

 
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