Tips on mounting Monkeylectric Monkey Lights
This might seem obvious to some of you, and I'll concede I might not be the sharpest knife in the kitchen, but I thought I'd share what I learned from mounting my Monkey Lights.
I was putting two lights on one wheel, as suggested by Monkeylectric to achieve better balance. The instructions say to mount units with the battery pack inside the wheel (i.e. inside the spokes, nearest the centerline).
While doing this, at some point I decided it made sense to mount a unit on each side of the wheel wheel, that is, on drive- and non- drive side spokes, and this is where the problems arose.
First, I wasn't able to get the the two units directly opposite each other, e.g. at 3 and 9 o'clock positions, because the spoke locations didn't line up. I was being hasty, rushing to get them on in time to ride to a street fair downtown that night, so they were out of line a bit, but secure.
I also noticed that the wheel was a little out of balance, but not too bad and nothing that bothered me at a steady 18mph cruise, but lumpy nonetheless.
During the day, when the lights were off, this lack of alignment across the wheel made me crazy, aesthetically speaking, so I decided to try and reposition them. At first, thinking my lacing pattern was the problem, I looked for another position on each side of the wheel that would let me get the units aligned, but no dice.
I found that best alignment came from positioning each unit on the same side (in my case, non-drive) of the rear wheel, so I decided to go with that, and it looks a lot better; nice and symmetrical. Additionally, it really cleaned up the light patterns, so I'm getting better definition in the designs now, and the wheel balance is restored-- spinning smoothly--so I'm really happy.
I hope this little insight is helpful to someone else having fun with these wheel lights.