Inexpensive Light for Riding at Night

[hooverone]

What is the best/least expensive night for riding at night?

Most of the time I would go out in the daylight and just concerned it it going to get too dark too fast.


Jim

[kidamaro]

Sounds like for what you want, something like the Nite Rider Road Rat will work. I use the digital evolutin, but I ride when it's pretty dark. 10 watts is enough most of the time, but I like to have a brighter light when going down hill. Road Rat may not produce enough light for safe decents faster than 20 mph. Caluclate the riding time/ per dollar and watts per dollar when looking at different lights.

[BumbleBeeDave]

. . . a Marwi Nightpro "Kamikaze" with two lights--12 watt wide low beam and a 20 watt pencil high beam. There's also a handlebar switch for the high beam and lead-acid battery that's actually shaped alike a water bottle and clicks right into the bottle holder.

Marwi's are a great value compared to NiteRiders, Nite Sun, etc . . .

* 20 watt flood, and 12 watt spot beams
* Water bottle Nickel Metal Hydride battery
* Plug and forget overnight charger
* Adjustable cord
* 715g
* 3.0 hour burn time at 12 watts
* 1.8 hour burn time at 20 watts
* 1.1 hour burn time at 32 watts

Do a search on Yahoo and you can find places that have them.

BBDave

[dirtdigger88]

I vote for the road rat as well. I used one for two years for my commute. I would not use one for a midnight MTB ride, but for that last 30- 40 minutes at the end of the day the thing is great. I got mine for less than $100 and it is worth every penny.

Jason

[hooverone]

What rear light would be good to let cars know you are there, a tail light?


Jim

[hooverone]

So far the road rat looks like a good headlight especially since it would be for the last 45min to an hour of a ride and they are not very expensive.


Jim

[dirtdigger88]

I use a cheapie Trek unit. Square red light about 2 inches square. It has a solid mode and a flash. Probably a $20 unit. It has a clip that I can either hook on the back of my helmet on on my saddle bag. I think it also came with a bracket but I never used that.

Jason

[Orin]

Front light, all night, road riding:

Schmidt SON generator hub with E6 lamp. As good as any 10W rechargeable IMO. A second lamp can be added if you are going too fast for just one... lots of information at Peter White Cycles (http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/Schmidt-Lumotec.asp) I usually carry a spare bulb.

Front light, an hour or two (get me home), road riding:

Cateye EL300 or EL500. LED based and last all night... and the next night... and the next night... (they claim 30 hours run time on 4 AA batteries). EL300 is like a rechargeable running about 6W. EL500 is brighter, but I haven't tried it at night yet. I can't say how long the EL300 really lasts because when it started to get dim, I could never remember how long it was since I'd changed the batteries...

I also have a Black Diamond "Moonlight" led headlamp (search for moonlight on rei.com) permanently attached to my helmet. This is emergency backup and useful for illuminating street signs and pointing at cars coming out of side streets. Not much good for illuminating the road.

Rear light:

Cateye RR-LD500 - blinking or steady LED and most importantly, it's a CPSC reflector as well so I'm legal if I forget to turn it on or the battery quits.

Having led a year round evening ride twice a week for a year or so, I've noticed more problems with rechargeables than anything else. "Forgot to charge it", advertised to last 3 hours and quits after 2 if below X degrees temperature (and it almost always is here) and finally, "didn't realize it was running at max power" as it quits an hour into a two hour ride. At least if an LED battery light is getting dim, you can get batteries at most any gas station, convenience store etc..

Orin.

[froze]

Don't get those LED lights unless you don't care about seeing the road and need long run times. Your key word was cheap, but not sure what cheap means to you. But I have a Cygo Metro that cost $48 and has 2 beams-one 6 watt flood and one 6 watt spot for a combine total of 12 watts. The unit runs off of 6 D batteries, so just like the LED's you can get batteries anywhere. The bats will last 5 hours on one beam or 2.5 hour if you run both. This unit also has the option of adding a rechargeable battery pack if you want to. I find this light more then adequate and I just use the flood mostly. The flood beam pattern is about 8 to 10 feet in diameter with stray light out to the sides, and the spot (aimed 5 degress higher then the flood) is about 2 feet in diameter. So for $48 dollars that's a bargain.

Cygo also has a Rover NiCad unit that cost about $80 that can run up to 6 hours on a charge on low 6 watt flood. It also has a 10 watt flood and combining them would get you to 16 watts. Of course at higher wattages your battery life drops to 2 hours if using both beams.

Taillights, I use the Cateye 600 5 led unit AND I use those new little taillights that plug into your handlebar ends-these little guys are surprisingly bright!

[Andreu]

http://www.lumicycle.co.uk

[Too Tall]

Well you asked for best / least expensive so I gotta go with Cateye Hl500 for a front light. With fresh batteries it will run a solid 3 1/2 hr.s before it dims / yellows. Price is right and the light bracket is on and off in an instatnt. This light is good enough for Brevet riding.

Bad news on current crop of bicycle front LED lights. They begin quite bright and have a dramatic dimming after a few hrs. I was not enthusiastic after seeing many riders abandon them early in the season last yr. Good news! There is a new generation of LED lights coming onto the market which use a high efficiency new gen. LED. These will be AWESOME and so will the price. This is so promising that you can bet it will be the light of choice for PBP 07'. If you want to bone up on this cool technology start here: http://www.theledlight.com/inova-XO.html

For a rear light I've never seen anything hold up better over the long haul than (you guessed it) Cateye.

[Orin]

A comment on rear LED lights.

Some of them have a clip for clipping onto a pocket or the strap some underseat bags have. Don't believe the clip is strong enough. The light will gradually work its way free and jump off onto the road, scattering batteries and light bits. If you are lucky, you'll find all the bits and still have a working light so you can repeat the process a few miles later...

I stop the fall onto the road part of the process by looping a zip-tie through the underseat bag strap and the light clip (the Cateye clip has a suitable slot in the clip). Now when the light unclips itself, it ends up dangling from the zip-tie.

Orin.