Lights

Can anyone tell me the name of the rear light reeen has? I think clefty also has the same light...

that light would be the "BLT XR9 Fantom"
7.5watt rear madness - everything brighter costs tons more cash or is a homebrew.

brilliant light, water tight and reasonable lasting battery life, however shite clamp.
it holds the light to the left or right of the seatpost but due to the size of it, it rubs
on the leg.

solution for me was to take the half of the clamp with the slide/clip
mechanism and bolt it to the saddle with a sepcial pop rivet that, instead of a bolt like
rivet, has a nut like bit with a m3 thread cut in. drilled a m5 hole, squeezed the nut rivet in the saddle, half the bracket (filed a bit so it has the right angle and sits flush with the saddle contour) bolted on to it and you have yourself a rear beam like some don't even have front lights with.

buy it here and picture with clamp:

see plenty of these every day. they got to follow the angle of the seat tube as far as I understand.

i used to have this cateye as i found em bright enough, slim and slick and fitting for a bike seatpost

BUT

i've been cheated for my money, all i got was this shit cheapo, badly glued together piece of untrustworthy plastic shit from china. go get the same stuff noname from a chinese ebayer or sth for a 5er and it'll still be a bit shit.

these have no water protection that keeps water out and ensures they don't rott and loose contact to the batteries. the batteries are held in place by two bent metal strips, not springs, so mounted upright like this, one pothole and the shock bends the plates apart thus the batteries loose contact - they don't always come back on when that happens so the light goes black and you cycle without a rear home before you find out.

same for the roundish and more chunky double row cateye. better water protected, yes but still just two of the single one in one casing, meaning two switches and they don't blink in sync to maximize brightness. just some half ass product as the rest.

worthless piece of overpriced goodweather plastic shit, fuck, i hate em!

hope vision one in the front - second battery cage in the bag -
blt fantom on the rear - so bright, i get acknowledgment for this even when my batteries are rather low

those never let me down and see me home in fucking blairwitch night and mental driver's kent.

be safe out there, guys and girls!

Yes i've had this baby for some time and it rules (Fiddy told me after the Dun run that he loved it as he could see me from miles away and because of it swinging around, he always knew it was me), as Reen says though the clamp is shite, so mine hangs off the back of my bag with the carabiner - which actually makes it really noticable as it swings around a lot and lights up the road as well as my rear tyre.
Run Nimh rechargeables in it and it lasts ages.

hope vision one in the front - large capacity nimh batteries
blt fantom on the rear

=win

Can't recommend the Blackburn Flea enough. Great light set. Really bright, tiny, and you can charge them off USB.

little mod guide for the BLT XR9 Fantom:

1st the 'pop nut' and you'll need a bit of a more fancy pop rivet gun with a different tip set up than for the normal rivets. i bet it can be done without drilling and with epoxy glue instead:

2nd the mounted half of the bracket to clip on/off the light. i filed the bolt on bit slightly concave to sit flush with the kink in the saddle and to prevent it from turning:

3rd the mounted light. it worx perfect, ask anyone who rode behind me. believe me, they'll remember!

@ clefty: yeees rechargeables ftw!

Wouldn't work for me, as my saddle is so high up it would shine above the cars behind me ;-)

Seriously though good work, I always wondered how your little mod worked. Very clever.

the angle is adjustable by the filing of the part that gets bolted to the saddle underside.
besides, it's supposed to shine backwards to keep cars speeding at you from overseeing you. from a distance starting by say 5-10 yards it's totally fine, even on your giraffe of a seat ;)

everything closer and they'll go blind due to the brightness anyway

but you could always put it on the seatstays with the regular clamp, just clutters up the bike - me dislike.

like so:

this however will rub the leg:

this could work ok, too:

http://www.troutie.com/index.php
Poor website but the lights look awesome!

They do look good, wonder what the pricing is?

Lumen Liberator inc mount is £200 built including postage and packing
14.8 volt 2.6 amp hour Li Ion battery and Charger £70

Or £170 if you build the light yourself!

Anyone using a Blackburn 4.0?
Supposed to be the same LED as that BLT XR9 Fantom but with better side vision. £18:50 too

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/cycle/7/Blackburn_Mars_40_Safety_Rear_Light/5360037937/

same LED maybe, but not the same output. they claim "50 hour runtime (steady) & 150 hour (flashing)" with 2x AAA which would be higher than the fantom with 3xAAA. so only possible conclusion, they are not as bright.

so only possible conclusion, they are not as bright have a more efficient driver design and better optics.

I'm not sure that this is true, but your conclusion that there can only be one possible conclusion is definitely wrong.

more effective driver means it's of a later design and would much likely to be more expensive than the former version and that dribbles through to their retail price. optics are both plastic lenses, nothing fancy there... or, the mars light's casing is super cheapo, what i don't believe by the good feedback these get.

one should by one and find out. but yeah, it's not impossible, true.

apologies if its a re-post but this is pretty good for the price. then just get one of those velcro things.

http://www.tools4trade.com/d-3801584-LED-Lenser-7008-L7-Light-Polycarbonate-Torch-85-Hour-100-lumen.aspx

more effective driver means it's of a later design and would much likely to be more expensive than the former version

Ah, so that's why my 2GHz 64 bit microprocessor is so much more expensive than the 100MHz 80486 that was in my first computer. Except is isn't, it's half the price in cash and about 1/4 in inflation adjusted terms, and it consumes less power even though the clock frequency has gone up twenty fold.

i race you! ^

:)

i wasn't thinking in computer light years, over-exaggerated time spans - i was more up to a one step up incline in effectiveness, where what i said still stands. your new cpu is a bit more pricey than the older version that gets 'replaced' delivering minor bump in effectiveness.

but i am also aware that bulk orders and quantity discounts can invert that pretty easy, plus the margin on top, which i don't know how much it is and it can as well be. not impossible.

Anyone using a Blackburn 4.0?
Supposed to be the same LED as that BLT XR9 Fantom but with better side vision. £18:50 too

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/cycle/7/Blackburn_Mars_40_Safety_Rear_Light/5360037937/

It's a fucking excellent light. dancing james has one and you can see him from literally a mile away. I have the 3.0 and even that's more than adequate.

+1 for the Mars 3.0.

I had one but it fell off on edgware road and got smashed by a bus.
Either I didn't mount it properly or the bracket is less than awesome.
Probably the former.

The bracket is very good. You probably didn't click it in properly. I always push it in and listen out for the click to make sure it's secure.

plus it looks a bit like a Transformer, which is a plus in my eyes.