Lights



Not seen or used these but probably not bad for the money. Depends what you plan to do, commute, MTB trails or road ride ?? Would be OK for commute or road but maybe not for MTB
Bottle battery means you loose a bidon cage to hold battery. Could possibly be improved with better bulbs/globes
 
Their LED lights are ****. I had a tail light fail before it even got on the bike, and I had a headlight fail on the way home tonight, making for a very nervous ride. The handlebar mounting brackets are horribly underengineered and fragile as well. So I'd expect the halogen to be the same.

I'd save my pennies and buy something more reputable.
 
j.r.hawkins said:
Their LED lights are ****. I had a tail light fail before it even got on the bike, and I had a headlight fail on the way home tonight, making for a very nervous ride. The handlebar mounting brackets are horribly underengineered and fragile as well. So I'd expect the halogen to be the same.

I'd save my pennies and buy something more reputable.
Uh oh. I've got no excuse, but it was late, I was tired, I wasn't thinking, so I ordered one anyway. $94.00 including postage from NZ, I suppose you get what you pay for.
With your (not so) reassuring words, I wait with baited breath.
I'll keep you all posted (now where did I put that roll of tape & cable ties. Might come in useful).
 
peterlip said:
Uh oh. I've got no excuse, but it was late, I was tired, I wasn't thinking, so I ordered one anyway. $94.00 including postage from NZ, I suppose you get what you pay for.
With your (not so) reassuring words, I wait with baited breath.
I'll keep you all posted (now where did I put that roll of tape & cable ties. Might come in useful).

FWIW a friend of mine bought one middle of last year to use during the Dirtworks Classic. Apparently worked well enough for him without any faults. His only gripe was the run time was not long enough and he didn't have a spare battery. It also gets used on his commuter and again no problems encountered.
 
peterlip said:
Uh oh. I've got no excuse, but it was late, I was tired, I wasn't thinking, so I ordered one anyway. $94.00 including postage from NZ, I suppose you get what you pay for.
With your (not so) reassuring words, I wait with baited breath.
I'll keep you all posted (now where did I put that roll of tape & cable ties. Might come in useful).
Update:
It arrived two friday's ago, and I used it for my commute once last week. Aside from running out of room on my handle bars, it's very easy to mount. The bracket has a slight wobble in it, but it seems secure, so I'll be interested to see how it lasts.
As for the actual light, on the bike paths with zero lights (so pitch black), with both globes going, the light is sufficent to sit on 35+ km/h with no anxiety. Plus it gives a very wide beam, so no danger of running into hanging branches which was one of the issues I had with my previous light (cateye EL500 which was pretty bright, but a very narrow beam).
It has a switch for the 10W globe that you mount close to the grip so you can switch it on and off easily when required.
The switch for the 5W globe is on the back of the globe and is a bit stiff, so not necessarly easy to turn off and on while on the move. I suppose the idea is to leave it this one on, so it's not really an issue.
All in all, after one ride, I'm quite happy with my $94 (inc postage) purchase.
 
My new opticube EL410 arrived from an ebayer in the US yesterday, so I got to try it on the way home tonight. Not good enough for a headlight on unlit roads, but plenty good enough to make myself seen, and supposedly waterproof to 50m.

I've had a run of destroyng flasher headlights cycling in the rain the last few weeks, so I was pleased to get a reliable light at less than half the going rate for the same unit here (5 cents change from a hundred bucks). For what they are, I'm just amazed that people are silly enough to pay that for what must cost less than 10 bucks to make including labour.

For my trail light I made up a unit consisting of a 3W Luxeon MR16 downlight, an overvolt protection regulator from a **** Smith kit, some speaker cable and a pair of old 7.2V NiCds from my R/C model car racing days.

Cost me about $50 in parts. The only downside is the weight of the battery, but it's still light compared to some of the water bottle batteries I've seen used with halogen headlights.

The runtime on a pair of 7.2V 1700mAh sub-C nicads is well over 3 1/2 hours, and the light output compares to a 15W halogen.

I found one of my old 6V 600mAh receiver batteries the other day. If I can find the spare I can mount them under the stem, and ditch the 1700s, the regulator and a bunch of wiring, get plenty of runtime for the trip home, and not notice the weight!
 
I've been very happy with my 5W and 10W NiteFlux NiMH lights. Very solidly built and well priced when on special.
 
robalert said:
I've been very happy with my 5W and 10W NiteFlux NiMH lights. Very solidly built and well priced when on special.
I only ride on the road and I am currently using a Fenix L2D CE torch as a headlight ($76 including delivery from Fenix). It has four different power settings and it runs on two AA batteries. On the highest setting, which is very bright you get about two hours run time. I generally use one of the lower settings whilst in the bunch and only put it on the highest setting when I do my turn on the front. I am using re chargeable batteries and having no problems.
The only issue is how to mount it to your bike. I am currently just sitting it on my old headlight bracket and using a couple of rubber bands to hold it in place. This works well.
The torch is light, has no wires to a heavy battery pack and is inexpensive.
 
SimonK said:
I only ride on the road and I am currently using a Fenix L2D CE torch as a headlight ($76 including delivery from Fenix). It has four different power settings and it runs on two AA batteries. On the highest setting, which is very bright you get about two hours run time. I generally use one of the lower settings whilst in the bunch and only put it on the highest setting when I do my turn on the front. I am using re chargeable batteries and having no problems.
The only issue is how to mount it to your bike. I am currently just sitting it on my old headlight bracket and using a couple of rubber bands to hold it in place. This works well.
The torch is light, has no wires to a heavy battery pack and is inexpensive.
Hi Simon,
I am looking at torchlight solutions as well. How far does this light throw? Does the light give you a wide beam? Or is it just a narrow one?

Thanks
 
SimonK said:
I only ride on the road and I am currently using a Fenix L2D CE torch as a headlight ($76 including delivery from Fenix). It has four different power settings and it runs on two AA batteries. On the highest setting, which is very bright you get about two hours run time. I generally use one of the lower settings whilst in the bunch and only put it on the highest setting when I do my turn on the front. I am using re chargeable batteries and having no problems.
The only issue is how to mount it to your bike. I am currently just sitting it on my old headlight bracket and using a couple of rubber bands to hold it in place. This works well.
The torch is light, has no wires to a heavy battery pack and is inexpensive.
+1. I got an L1D CE plus the body (tube) for an L2D CE from fenix-store.com and am very happy with it. The extra body means I can choose small bright light with ~ 1 hr runtime or bigger small bright light with longer runtime! I attach it to my bars with a Nite Ize Lite Ride - a rubber strap that wraps around the torch and the bars and (so far, only 2 weeks) works well.
 
I just got an ultrafire C2 (cree) and this this rocks! Throw is easily out to 60 metres, burntime should be about an hour. I got 4 rechargeable 123As and a charger unit while I was at it, so a cheap solution for less than $50 all up.
 
thomas_cho said:
Hi Simon,
I am looking at torchlight solutions as well. How far does this light throw? Does the light give you a wide beam? Or is it just a narrow one?

Thanks
I have the torch aimed at the road about twenty metres in front of me at at this distance is lights up the road very well with a wide beam.