front light

Need a new front light.

In the past I had a Cateye Opticube thing, it was abysmal. You could see
they had saved money by not using a seal and attempting to design it so
water drained through without hitting anything electrical. What a joke!!
Obviously water vapour condenses on everything and so it is next to useless.
Add to that brittle disintegrating plastic that slowly made the bracket a
wobbly rattley nightmare - so no, I don't want another cateye.

What I do want is LED driven, super bright enough to see by (albeit 'just'
I'll concede). High quality, well designed and will last me many years to
come. I will be using it on sections of pitch black road, but only for a
mile or so of the 15 mile commute, the rest is street lit. I value the
efficiency and hassle free nature of LED enough to put up with the less than
ideal output. But prob am looking at the latest most efficient and super
bright LED offering available.

Thanks
Mike W

visionset wrote:
Need a new front light.

In the past I had a Cateye Opticube thing, it was abysmal. You could see
they had saved money by not using a seal and attempting to design it so
water drained through without hitting anything electrical. What a joke!!
Obviously water vapour condenses on everything and so it is next to useless.
Add to that brittle disintegrating plastic that slowly made the bracket a
wobbly rattley nightmare - so no, I don't want another cateye.

What I do want is LED driven, super bright enough to see by (albeit 'just'
I'll concede). High quality, well designed and will last me many years to
come. I will be using it on sections of pitch black road, but only for a
mile or so of the 15 mile commute, the rest is street lit. I value the
efficiency and hassle free nature of LED enough to put up with the less than
ideal output. But prob am looking at the latest most efficient and super
bright LED offering available.

It depends how much you want to spend.
Probably near the lower end is the B&M IXON. Good enough to see by on
unlit roads, but may limit the speed you can go at and see far enough ahead.
At the upper end are a whole range, but I don't have any experience of
them ... yet.

--
Don Whybrow

Sequi Bonum Non Time

A child of five could understand this! Fetch me a child of five.

"visionset" wrote in
Need a new front light.

In the past I had a Cateye Opticube thing, it was abysmal. You could see
they had saved money by not using a seal and attempting to design it so
water drained through without hitting anything electrical. What a joke!!
Obviously water vapour condenses on everything and so it is next to
useless. Add to that brittle disintegrating plastic that slowly made the
bracket a wobbly rattley nightmare - so no, I don't want another cateye.

You obviously don't have any familiarity with (N)Ever Ready lamps back in
the 80's.

What I do want is LED driven, super bright enough to see by (albeit
'just' I'll concede). High quality, well designed and will last me many
years to come. I will be using it on sections of pitch black road, but
only for a mile or so of the 15 mile commute, the rest is street lit. I
value the efficiency and hassle free nature of LED enough to put up with
the less than ideal output. But prob am looking at the latest most
efficient and super bright LED offering available.

The Halfords/Hella 1W lamp has an excellent beam pattern but it needs
masking to remove the backwash. It easily beats 2.5W filament lamps or 1W
Cateyes. I doubt it is robust in the wet. The lamp is a loose fit on the
clamp, the clamp itself is easily broken and I have not found replacements.

One consideration with Cateyes is that the clamps are robust and spares are
easily available. The newer design doesn't seem to rattle.

I recently bought a lighting set from Lidl. Filament obviously and not
bright enough for unlit roads but for £4 you can't argue. It does show,
however, that it really is possible to design a mechanically decent lamp
with a robust, rattle free bracket.

So far I've been pleased with Trelock LED headlights (www.trelock.de),
but have no really long term experience.
LS 600 (5 AA's):
- owned for 2 years
- slightly rattly bracket (but fixed with a bit of sponge tape - a
newer bracket seems better)
- awkward battery compartment lid (rear of case held on with offset
screw, but can use an external charger)
- battery low warning light
- decent beam shape
- survived falling off at 25mile/hr when I hit a drain recess...
- cost £25

LS730 (4 AA's)
- new
- better fit (same bracket as LS600)
- lighter than LS600
- easy battery access (front section of light removes)
- battery low warning light
- decent beam shape and subjectively similar output to LS630 (despite
what it says on web site)
- cost £25 from bike24

Can't really comment on waterproofness, as I tend not to ride if it's
'that' wet, but not aware of any issues.
YMMV, of course.

DavidR wrote:
"visionset" wrote in

Need a new front light.

In the past I had a Cateye Opticube thing, it was abysmal. You could see
they had saved money by not using a seal and attempting to design it so
water drained through without hitting anything electrical. What a joke!!
Obviously water vapour condenses on everything and so it is next to
useless. Add to that brittle disintegrating plastic that slowly made the
bracket a wobbly rattley nightmare - so no, I don't want another cateye.


You obviously don't have any familiarity with (N)Ever Ready lamps back in
the 80's.

sigh And steel rims at night in the wet. Kids today! Don't know
they're born.

DavidR said the following on 31/10/2007 23:25:

You obviously don't have any familiarity with (N)Ever Ready lamps back in
the 80's.

Gawd - I'd forgotten about those. When I was a student at Leicester
Poly I used to visit my Gran about 30 miles away regularly (for food!).
How the heck I got there cycling along pitch black lanes with those
crappy lights, I don't know. Half the time I couldn't even see the edge
of the road, and looked forward to cars coming behind me so I could see
where I was going for a bit!

--
Paul Boyd
http://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

On 1 Nov, 08:37, Paul Boyd usenet.is.worse@plusnet wrote:
DavidR said the following on 31/10/2007 23:25:

You obviously don't have any familiarity with (N)Ever Ready lamps back in
the 80's.

Gawd - I'd forgotten about those. When I was a student at Leicester
Poly I used to visit my Gran about 30 miles away regularly (for food!).
How the heck I got there cycling along pitch black lanes with those
crappy lights, I don't know. Half the time I couldn't even see the edge
of the road, and looked forward to cars coming behind me so I could see
where I was going for a bit!

--
Paul Boydhttp://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

Don't forget their crappy switches, which were a plastic slider and
strips of phosphor-bronze. Invariably, the strips would deform and
refuse to turn on or turn off. I fitted mine with a decent miniature
toggle switch, in parallel, so the crappyness of the original switch
didn't matter.

In the old days, I recall discussing on urc the benefits of swapping
the reflector from a redundant front Never Ready into a rear. The
extra surface area made for a bright rear light.

David Lloyd

In article , usenet.is.worse@plusnet
says...
DavidR said the following on 31/10/2007 23:25:

You obviously don't have any familiarity with (N)Ever Ready lamps back in
the 80's.

Gawd - I'd forgotten about those. When I was a student at Leicester
Poly I used to visit my Gran about 30 miles away regularly (for food!).
How the heck I got there cycling along pitch black lanes with those
crappy lights, I don't know. Half the time I couldn't even see the edge
of the road, and looked forward to cars coming behind me so I could see
where I was going for a bit!


And that was before the batteries had leaked and corroded all the
electricals ;-)

--
Tony

" I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong."
Bertrand Russell

On Oct 31, 10:06 pm, "visionset" wrote:
Need a new front light.

In the past I had a Cateye Opticube thing, it was abysmal. You could see
they had saved money by not using a seal and attempting to design it so
water drained through without hitting anything electrical. What a joke!!
Obviously water vapour condenses on everything and so it is next to useless.
Add to that brittle disintegrating plastic that slowly made the bracket a
wobbly rattley nightmare - so no, I don't want another cateye.

What I do want is LED driven, super bright enough to see by (albeit 'just'
I'll concede). High quality, well designed and will last me many years to
come. I will be using it on sections of pitch black road, but only for a
mile or so of the 15 mile commute, the rest is street lit. I value the
efficiency and hassle free nature of LED enough to put up with the less than
ideal output. But prob am looking at the latest most efficient and super
bright LED offering available.

Thanks
Mike W

That'll be the Lupine Betty 12 then...

"Paul Boyd" usenet.is.worse@plusnet wrote in message
...
DavidR said the following on 31/10/2007 23:25:

You obviously don't have any familiarity with (N)Ever Ready lamps back in
the 80's.

Gawd - I'd forgotten about those. When I was a student at Leicester Poly
I used to visit my Gran about 30 miles away regularly (for food!). How the
heck I got there cycling along pitch black lanes with those crappy lights,
I don't know. Half the time I couldn't even see the edge of the road, and
looked forward to cars coming behind me so I could see where I was going
for a bit!

The later ones with the batteries at an angle to the lens and the clip up
the middle were fine for urban use IME. People did have problems with them
falling out of the clips, but don't know if that was user error because mine
stayed in ok. I did wonder if there were two generations, one with a more
reliable clip.

I remember a crash due to no light one night, but that was with rather
failing batteries so not really surprising :-)

Still, there are good reasons I went to dynamos all round.

cheers,
clive