Hello All,
In the Northwest part of the US where we live it gets dark around 5:00 p.m. as soon as daylight savings time ends, so every year we wrestle with bicycle lighting. The best website on the subject is http://bicyclelighting.com. They are not trying to sell anything, but give good advice on either buying a pre- made setup or building your own. Decent bike shop lights are definitely over-priced.
My wife and I usually end up riding our tandem bicycle after dark. We have settled on LED blinkers mounted on both of the rear handle bar ends, the rear seat post, and her helmet. We also have a flashing strobe on the rear seat post. In addition we wear reflective clothing called Illuminite.
For headlights we use two ten watt halogen bulbs mounted on our front handlebars one spot and one wide angle. I wear a ten watt halogen spot bulb mounted on my helmet. We use 6v 4ah Sealed Lead Acid (SLA) batteries.
We are fortunate; the batteries are available from a local provider for $5 a piece. They are used as backup batteries for emergency lighting and burglar alarms. When they are new they will power a 10w bulb for around 2 hours when they are fully charged. I normally use only one of the two bulbs mounted on the bars at a time. This way the two batteries last about the same length of time.
We also have a five LED backup headlight in case our primary systems go dead. This year I added two 12v 6w Chinese Dynamos. These put out their rated power at around 12 mph. I attached a full wave bridge rectifier, from Radio Shack to each. Then I hooked them up in parallel and use them to charge the battery hooked to the handlebar lamps if it gets low. The battery prevents the voltage from getting high enough to burn out the lamp.
The biggest problem I had with the dynamos is that they slip on the tires, especially in the rain. This was solved by turning the spring around in the mount on one of the dynamos and mounting it on the opposite fork blade. Our fender had to be ground back a bit with a Dremel tool to clear the dynamo rollers.
I made levers out of 1/8" by 1/2" steel rod about 6" long. These were attached to the bottle shaped dynamos with a hose clamp and some tape. The levers stick up a couple inches above the front fender. The ends were bent outwards and a hole drilled in each so that a bolt can tie the two generators together. The nut is finger tightened while riding, enough to squeeze the two dynamos together against the sidewalls of the tire just enough to stop the slipping.
Initially, I had planned to use the dynamos all the time to extend the life of our battery when using both of the handlebar bulbs at once. A typical 6v 3w dynamo has very little drag, but the drag and noise from these two units is significant. It slows us down by a couple of miles per hour and the noise is loud enough to be irritating.
I have to admit that the weight of an extra battery would not be any more than that of the two dynamos, but I do like that this system allows us to ride even if we forget to charge the batteries.
Sincerely,
Steve
sahc said:The Lumicycles.co.uk doesn't work for me. Cause I'm in USA? Found reviews on web but no specs and no place that sells em.
