New ebike headlights are in!
Part of my ride home is over dark country roads with no overhead lights, so having a bright headlight is key. We recently got in new ebike headlights that are powered directly from your ebike battery and are SUPER bright. Check out this new video showing the new light.
You can find this light in our online store at under the Electric a-la-cart section
Ride On!
-Elise
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I bought a Terralux LED upgrade for a streamlight flashlight for $39.00 from Brightguy.com. Here is the website – “www.brightguy.com/products/TerraLUX_TLE-110S_Multi-Mode_LED_Upgrade_Kit.php”. It runs on 5 Nimh cells or 2 Life cells, has 3 output levels, and is rated at 600 lumens. For those of you who have some mechanical and electrical abilities, this one is for you. I am going to mount it in the head of a 2 D cell maglight cut off just past the switch (will need some machining), and will run it on either 5 Nimh cells or a 6v/5AH SLA batt which should give me a good 2 hours run time.
I was with you until you mounted the light upside down:
http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/light-mounts.asp#upsidedown
After I saw that I wondered: “1000 lumens…sure… but where it shining them? Considering this product was developed by the same company that designed the big-flat-bank-of-leds, http://www.ebikes.ca/lights/front_light.jpg … it looks like optics may not have been given much consideration. They make no claims on their website that they shape the beam in any particular way, and your video didn’t either. Would could be compelling is a side-by-side comparison between this light and an alternative.
Peter White provides some compelling comparison photos that I find useful:
http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/headlights.asp
I’m still considering getting bottle-dynamo driven lights even though I have an e-bike. It seems like safety feature to have lights that work even when the electrical motor system might fail or the battery run out.
Mark
The light is adjustable up and down, so you can adjust it not to shine too high or low. As far as I can tell it’s a round beam, so upside down / right side up shouldn’t matter. Interesting article from Peter White that you mention. I agree that it’s difficult to capture accurate or useful images with a camera -kind of like taking pictures of the moon (it never quite looks the same on film). This light seems perhaps a bit narrower band than some of the ones on that page, but much more illuminating than the lower powered lights.
Being that it’s still the middle of summer (!) I have only had a few times to give it a good try – something that will change a lot as we get on into fall.
Yes, the light is designed by ebikes.ca, but I’m sure they did not design the optics on this light, just adapted it to work with the ebike battery.
Mark, I’d argue that any light that demands to be mounted a particular way, has a boneheaded design. Yes, the optimal beam is not symmetrical, but my bike is not a bike-light-display-stand, either. Ideally, the light would rotate within its mount, allowing you to put it wherever it fits best, including “upside down”, while still sending out a properly oriented beam. And bike lights cost enough, that they ought to be that good (the parts cost is a tiny fraction of the cost of the light, the design should be superb for that kid of markup).
Elise — one trick, to shape the round beam, and put a bit less into people’s eyes, is to get an acrylic mirror, cut it to fit under the basket, with mounting holes drilled for the light, which perhaps you put a little further back. Any upward splash from the light is reflected back down to the pavement. Here’s an example:
http://dr2chase.wordpress.com/2008/12/13/some-assembly-required-batteries-not-included/
Compare the yellow (low beam, light closer to the mirror, hence sharper cutoff) with the white (light further from the mirror, softer cutoff).
Acrylic mirror, more than you need:
http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=66281&catid=442
Hello there, just doing some browsing for my Maglight site. Can’t believe the amount of information out there. Wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but very nice site. Have a great day.