If you want night ride action and can’t afford LEDs, upgrade some halogens with better lamps and batteries and you can still Own The Night(tm).
While I’m waiting for the postal service to thaw out and my DIY LED package to arrive from Troutie, I thought I’d dig out my old halogen lights and see what I could do with them. I have:
* 2 Lumicycle cans plus a 13.2v Ni-MH battery and charger. One can apparently dead.
* An ancient Cygolight halogen unit, rather like the Night Rover (http://bit.ly/gvXUBP ) but with a metal case.
* A Specialized single lamp unit with bar and helmet mounts (can’t find the latter just at the moment)
Having found that MR11 ‘Energy Saving’ (read: burn brighter / whiter) lamps were now less than a quid each at Toolstation (http://bit.ly/efJ36U ) I thought they were worth a punt. Got hold of some 16W 12° (wide spot) and 28W 18° (flood-ish) to have a play with.
Upgraded the Cygolite and Specialized units with the new MR11 units, and they burn a pretty neutral white with the NiMH pack. Have been using the Cygolite unit with this battery for commuting since the clocks went back, but it’s easily enough for medium-fast off-road work too.
In the meantime, I got hold of some of these batteries from Hong Kong: http://bit.ly/ibeRpW along with one of these top-tube mini-pannier bags: http://bit.ly/frJPGl and one of these chargers: http://bit.ly/eb35Xe
(When the links die in the future, look for eBay sellers go_market and duckeggbluetraders, but there are lots of alternatives)
Charger will handle almost any type of battery you can throw at it, but needs an external power supply. Working fine for me off an old IBM ThinkPad power pack which just happens to have the right plug.
The Halogens burn very brightly indeed with these LiPo batteries, which are well over 15v when freshly charged. This will shorten the life considerably, but at that price, frankly who cares? If the capacity is as claimed, you’re also looking at 4+ hours burn time for the 16w units, which is great for a battery weighing about a pound.
Next step is to upgrade the working Lumi can with a fresh halogen and get a smaller LiPo battery to go in the top of my pack.
