External mount headlight(s) for Barcelona 600

If you're going to assemble a fairing for road use it would be a good idea to fix the indicators and horn into it too. I think the requirement for indicators varies between states. For Tasmania bikes earlier than (about?) 1973 are exempt if they were not originally fitted by the manufacturer. Just have one multi-pin connector for everything so it's a quick and easy job to swap.

You could do something similar on the back end. Build a quick mounting tail/brake light, indicator assembly and rego plate.

Does the bike still have its charging system and starter?
 
breganzane said:
Unfortunately the Marchal lights are both frighteningly hard to get / expensive, and also ('scuse the heresy) completely rubbish!  their light pattern is a narrow path of light 1-2' wide, projecting forward to a rectangular patch of light about 6-10' square.  The cutoff is absolute and there is no illumination outside that area (at least on the pair I have anyhow), not much use as headlights on anything you intend to ride on the road at night.
In my limited investigation any light with a decent throw of light tends to be a lot deeper than the Marchal, so hanging them out front of the fairing will get clumsy/ugly.


Cheers
SteveB
Click to expand...


 Yea yea yea, but they look so damn COOL with the little cat thing :)
9155654959_67d03cddac_z.jpg



    Keith
 
Totally, totally with you there Kieth!  A good friend in europe very kindly found me a pair as I wanted to run a sort of V6-look nosecone on the injected RGA's SFC1000 fairing.  But that bike is
(or was, when I had the time!) used for normal long distance touring and I had to bin the idea of using the Marchals after I saw their ridiculous light output.
On a more specialised machine which does not need a proper headlight to spot things like kangaroos (or deer eh Kieth!?) they are the dog bollocks.  But I got the impression Yogi wanted something that worked, so thought it was worth mentioning.
 
So what is a set of the Marchal's worth?  A pair of new 812 foglights went for $170.00 on eBay in March

I can see that the fog light is an 812 Marchal, is the other one a white 812 spotlight, or does it have a different number?.

Anybody know of any Marchal 812 for sale?

Yogi
 
Why oh why would you have a fog light on a motorcycle???

And I thought that they were most effective when mounted low...

:o :o :o bazzee
 
Just to clarify a couple of points, the bike still has the charging system so there will be no problems on that score. I'm not sure about the SFC fairing thing, I suspect it's a Barcelona specific item - some of these Laverda racing fairings are subtly different to production items which appear superficially similar. I'd always assumed the Barcelona seat was a cut down F500 unit, not so, it's different across all the important dimensions. I suspect the fairing will be a similar story .

It should be easy to take a mould of the existing fairing and make up a suitable pattern, alternatively I'm sure Piero will be able to help. The trouble is some of these Italian suppliers take a long time to react and you will probably be better off having your own made and having a couple of spares made up while you're at it. On my spaceframe I laminated some Kevlar strengthening patches onto the back of the GRP fairing where the lights bolted to it and this seemed to work well. You could use carbon but it's not as effective in this application as Kevlar.

The works Barcelonas used a square headlight off a Fiat.
I'm really pleased my bike has gone to such a good home! There's a few pics of it in this month's Classic Bike
 
Here's a couple of pics of my old spaceframe sporting its Marchals. The first pic shows the yellow Marchals belonging to Laverda Corse [we'd put the Corse bodywork on my chassis for a qualifying session, Francesco is in the driving seat] The team used to favour the yellow lenses, or sometimes they'd fit a yellow and a clear to make the bike easier to identify at night.
The second shot is taken during a test session at Mallory and shows the hard plastic covers which are the thing to have if you're going for the traditional endurance racer look. Back in the day, the original works spaceframes sometimes ran without lights during the daytime segments of the races, it's more aerodynamic and cheaper if you crash.




 
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