I've been thinking about adding spotlights to the bike, but have no previous experience of them on any bike before. The Multi headlight is excellent on my 1260 S, but on really dark roads with no street lighting (country lanes etc) Id like some extra lighting thrown down just in front of the front wheel, say up to 5 or so meters ahead just like fog lights on a car. This would show up pot holes and other crap in the road. So is this the effect the Ducati spotlights would give me? I don't want to spend a lot of ££ and not get the desired effect Ducati Alton tell me I have the choice of the smaller discreet lights (all back), or the bigger silver lights. Any opinions on which are better ? Cheers
I put lights on my 1260 for increased visibility rather than increased light. You can angle them to light just below the normal beam. They don’t do a huge amount but do fill in some of the gaps.
I'd say the older Silver ones are slightly more effective, but the new black ones are more discrete. As Hamos says, it's more about improving your visibility to other road users
I'm not sure it would be of any help as you wouldn't be able to take any real evasive action in such a short distance/time anyway. And besides even in the dark you should really be looking much farther up the road. You might buy yourself some time to steel yourself & stand up a little on the pegs to prevent the Chalfonts getting a clattering...
Like you @pcn1, I didn't want to spend Ducati money, so I bought and fitted these: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/404216842651?var=674094762622 They are not exactly plug and play, as the brackets need to be re-bent to get the right width, and the small screws to mount the lights on them are made of cheese. I also had to drill the holes in the lights deeper and tap them for longer screws. I mounted the brackets on the radiator guard as the only place that was suitable. But I enjoy doing stuff like that and the result is two bright riding lights. Like those above they are for being seen by other road users, rather than see the road.
I have the standard ones on my GT and they do exactly what you want, light up the edges of the road around 5-20 metres ahead of you just to fill in the gaps left by the, already good, LED headlight.
Part of me says, if a road user (car driver) cant see me with my full LED headlight on, then having a couple of spot lights isn't going to improve their bad eye sight !!
Every little helps, as they say, I ride with the spots on all the time, probably to the annoyance of the other drivers but, at least they know I'm there.
So your saying they give you a "wider angle" of light at a shorter range, like lighting up the sides of the road/pavement in front of you ? Where I live we have a lot of small county lanes, and I tend to go down these at a very sedate pace due to pot holes, branches, mud on the road etc. To be honest, I'm not a very confident rider at night (old age !), and extra light would improve my perspective of the road. I often use the fogs on my car just to help light the road at night.
Yes, that's exactly what they do. I don't ride at night very often but, I'm always amazed by how much the little spots light up the places nearer to you, have a fair range too.
Cheers, I'll see if Alton will do me a deal while the have the bike apart for the cam belts and air filter
Don't forget you also have the 'cornering' lights which help illuminate the edges of bends. The spotlights are very helpful on motorways, cars will tend to move over quicker when you come up behind them
Take a look on YT. There's loads to chose from and something for every budget. Denalis seem the best but are expensive.
I know this is a 1260 thread ... but I just learned my V4S doesn't have cornering lights! (Coming from a V2S which did). That was a surprise.
From the all documents I've seen the Multistrada V4S does have Ducati Cornering Lights (DCL), the base model V4 does not:
Thanks ... I was searching in the manual .. it's mentioned explicitly in the V2S: V2S manual: V4S manual - nothing except Thanks @steveb123 for clarifying
I've never seen an option to switch the cornering lights on / off before - no option on the Multi 1200S (MY2015+) & 1260. Must be just a feature just on the V2S - not sure why you'd ever want to turn them off though
I don’t think that means the rider can switch them on and off. Just means the bike switches them on right when turning right and left when turning left.
Apparently part of the SMIDSY issue is the fact that bikes have a single headlight. Cagers tend to judge the distance that a car is from them by the distance between their headlights; the closer the car the bigger the gap between the headlights, the further away the car is, the closer together the headlights look and if far enough away a car’s headlights look like a single light, and therefore they think it’s safe to go. Putting the additional lights on give you a wider gap between them and potentially you become more visible. It may even make them think twice if they see three sources of light and have to work out what it is they are actually looking at.
