I’m getting some of the relatively minor jobs during the current wet/cold spell.

One of them is to make up a set of headlamp stays.

I did not have any as examples so had to set away from scratch and decided to make them up from tube, so I got a metre length of 1/2 inch tubing. The tube I got was really a bit on the heavy side for the job but as the price was right I decided to just use it anyway.

Unlike those on many bikes, the heavyweight Webbs on my model Panther have their headlamp stay lugs at right angle to the direction of travel.

This means that there is really only one position that the stay can be in and so I reckoned that if I made up the fork mounted end of each stay and bolted them in place, the cross-over point of the top and bottom stays could easily be marked and the other ends made up to suit.

I cut the tubing into appropriate lengths and went to flatten the end of the first stay in the vice and promptly found that the job was not as easy as I thought it would be!, I was worried that the vice would break the pressure it took!.

So it was put the stays in my pocket, get the modern bike out and go see Bob the engineer.

Bob introduced me to his 10 ton hydraulic press which quickly made light work of forming the stay ends.

Then it was back to the workshop where I drilled the mounting holes in the flattened ends and fitted the stays in place on the forks.

Headlamp Stays

As you can see, the stays crossed at what appeared from the catalogue pictures to be the correct point, so it was then just a case of mark them out and it was back to Bob’s press to finish them off.

The newly flattened ends were now cut to length, drilled and shaped and a trial mounting of the headlamp was made.

Headlamp Trial Mount

It took a little “tweaking” of the stay end angles but eventually all fitted together nicely so then the newly completed stays were put with the knee-grip plates to await being painted, might as well do everything at one paint session, it’ll mean less cleaning up afterwards.