Commuting - Oh bugger, I lost my blinkie

The other day, I was riding along the main road through my campus and rolled over a rough patch of pavement at a pretty good clip. Well, I heard a clatter and saw something out of the corner of my eye. What the!? Was that my blinkie!? Yep! Turned around, rolled back a few yards on the sidewalk, picked it up off the road and put it back on. That had never happened before! I had hit this same patch of pavement before, but the blinkie remained firmly anchored to its bracket on my seatpost.

Anyway, all was well, but I guess that the bracket must have loosened up a bit or something. I went for a ride today that included a fairly bumpy road that I had never ridden on before. When I locked my bike up a few minutes later, I noticed my blinkie was missing. It fell off! Noooo! So my cheap little Planet Bike blinkie is probably lying in the dirt somewhere on Sand Hill Road or something.

Anyway, I'm not doing much in the way of night riding these days, but I will probably need to purchase another blinkie this summer. I don't want to lose the next one! What do you do to keep your clip-on LED blinkies from jumping ship when you hit a patch of rough pavement, or a rock, or whatever nasty, bumpy conditions that you may being dealing with on your rides? Help save me a few bucks in the future!

Same thing happened to me. But blinkies are a dime a dozen. My plan is to find some that have adhesive that I can stick on as well as clip on.

Koffee

Speaking of which, I lost mine too(look at the rear picture of my poor bike)! Mine was permanenetly attached to my rear rack and I guess the attachment points were of poor quality. Any tips or recommendations on blinkies that do not have cheap plastic thinggies that comes in contact with the screw which are battery operated? I've seen those that attaches to your fenders and I liked the look of those. I also lost $14 worth of nicd when I lost the blinkies and I refuse to pay $25 a pop every time it the attachment fails :-(

What you can always do is, well, at least on the planet bike blinkers anyway, is take a small piece of old credit card or similar piece of plastic, sand it down into a edge, and jam it between the mounting bracket and the tab coming out of the blinker.
That'll prevent the blinker from pulling out of the mounting bracket far enough that the locking tab that's on it gets loose.

I've lost a number of these, but I was never able to recover them. Maybe there were cars around, or something, but I never heard it hit the ground. I've never lost the one clipped to my helmet.

I've lost these before, sometimes I can recover them and sometimes I can't, unfortunately I like a specific make and model, the Cateye TL-LD500.

Which reminds me, I need to order some more.

Some people clip them to their backpack or shirt. I went with DIY light mounting hardware mostly because the ready made ones looked fragile. My taillight hangs from my seat rails by some shock cord and a mini carbiner.

One solution with seatpost mounted blinkies: keep it so high that it will hit the bottom of your seat before coming off its attachment.

Mine actually passed me before :eek: :eek: Really :roflmao:
A newspaper hawker picked it up for me. Now I rubber band it.
Ive also had my computer pop out to after not clipping it in
properly. Check it too everytime you R & R it !

I put a little piece of electrical tape in the bracket. It tightens up the tolerances in the plastic.

I lost my brand new blinky on it's first 10 mile ride. Operator error - had the clip on wrong. At least it was only $12 on sale.

I don't want to lose the next one! What do you do to keep your clip-on LED blinkies from jumping ship when you hit a patch of rough pavement, or a rock, or whatever nasty, bumpy conditions that you may being dealing with on your rides? Help save me a few bucks in the future!
Zip ties or duct tape save the day, and the blinkie too. Zip ties are easier.

I had my big Cateye TL-1000 pop off at 30 mph once. I thought for sure it was going to be broken, but aside from a couple of scratches, it still works just fine. To better secure it, I used JB weld all around the bracket. I can still change the batteries, and it will definitely not fall off the bracket now! :D I have it mounted below my rear rack - with the difficulty involved in removing the bracket and the JB weld securing the light, I just leave it on while parked now...

there's always the dinotte blinkie... it's $120 though. it's the brightest tail light ever created to. i haven't had much of a problem with my cateye tld 1000's (or whatever they're called)... but those are $40 each... so if you lose them it's bad. they've stayed in even though i rode on gravel roads with lotsa pot holes. just make sure you DON'T use the universal mount. they suck horrbly.

After losing two blinkies as the result of weak plastic clips and vibration, I finally decided to do something realistic about it. I'm too OCP to use rubber bands or zip-ties, so I took apart the light, drilled and sealed a new hole for a flat-head machine bolt in the back of the light, then bolted it to the back of my seatbag. I don't suspect it'll ever come off again.

http://www.virtualcivilization.org/blinkie/end.jpg

http://www.virtualcivilization.org/blinkie/side.jpg

http://www.virtualcivilization.org/blinkie/bolt.jpg

- Warren

I've lost a number of blinkies. I mount mine at the end of the rear rack where the road shock is highest. Now I screw them on. Remove the lens and the circuit board holding the LEDs. Drill a hole in the plastic body beneath where the circuit board would go (there's always space for this without shorting out the electrics). Put a screw through that and a bracket on the bike.

Since I've started doing that I've lost no blinkies, not to bumps nor to pilferage. I did recently lose a lens though. So I'll be zip tying the lens on.

Zip ties. I put one around each of my seat stays. I take the part of the blinkie's bracket that's designed to go around a chain stay or seatpost, and I run that part through the zip tie loops. I then tighten the zip ties.

The zip ties absorb enough shocks that I have not lost a blinkie since I started using this method.

I've dropped many a blinkie, and have been lucky enough to retrieve all but one. In that case, I hit some potholes while cornering too fast, and as I turned around to head back I see my poor cateye get run over by not one but THREE vehicles. I managed to salvage one of the rechargeable batteries, so i suppose it wasn't a total loss. Now I use homemade attachments on the back of my rack along with duct tape (which as everyone knows, makes it no longer subject to the laws of physics).

http://www.performancebike.com/shop/profile_combo.cfm?SKU=19629&estore_ID=&subcategory_ID=&CFID=54833372&CFTOKEN=95315449

get this one minus the headlamp. It's really bright, LED, cheap, and comes with a mount. Got 2 at performance for $24 on sale. They also have a really sturdy clip.

I probably lost half a dozen until I started using zipties. Get the little ones, they're maybe 1.5mm wide and 120 mm long.

I vote for zip ties.

Lost one of mine once too. Didn't fare out too well though. It ended up in pieces all over the road.

I lost my expensive Cateye TL-1000 on its first ride. It unclipped from my trunk bag while riding a short dirt trail and I didn't hear it touch the ground. I was really pissed off so I replaced it with a cheap Planet Bike blinkie to which I drilled a whole to the clip and zip tied it through it to the seat bag.

Oh, so many ideas! I'll have to roll a die or something to figure out which one to try first... thanks everyone!

Remember, if you use zip ties, use outdoor or UV resistant ones.
Or what you can do is, mix a big gob of epoxy about the size of a ping pong ball, then jam the blinker in it and stick it to your bike frame.

For all bike problems......

Uh.. I don't think WD40 is going to help the blinker stay on...

Remember, if you use zip ties, use outdoor or UV resistant ones.
Or what you can do is, mix a big gob of epoxy about the size of a ping pong ball, then jam the blinker in it and stick it to your bike frame.
Oops. Mine are for interior use. But there are two holding the blinkie on, so if one fails, the other one will stop the blinkie from falling off. I've been using this method for more than a year now (replacing the zip ties once when I switched blinkies) and there are no signs of wear. I have had an "interior" zip tie holding my rack stay to my fender stay (so they don't rattle) for a couple years now, and it's still holding.

I got a container of 500 interior zip ties for (I think) $5 to $7 at Lowes. So it will be a long time until I run through them.

Uh.. I don't think WD40 is going to help the blinker stay on...

Would you believe that's for removing the glue residue from the tape later? No?

It's tired and I'm getting late. :o :rolleyes:

Oh, bugger MY blinkie fell off....

Was riding on the bike path I take almost every day to work and rode over a filled cut out in the pavement, when I hear a clattering sound. Worried that there was something structurally wrong with my bike -- and looking to make that something fail on the bike path, before I got back into heavy traffic -- I banged my butt on the saddle a couple of times. No noise. So I keep riding.

Once back in traffic, I got trapped behind a double length bus and a full-sized flatbed truck (confession: I would have taken the side walk, but all the parked cars to my right were bumper-to-bumper). Anyway, just before stopping, I hear the clattering again. I turned around, thinking my panniers must have come loose, and I see my blinkie sitting on top of my rack. The rack is a Topeak for a child carrier, so it has raised edges that "caught" the blinkie. I'd probably ridden 1/2 mile with it back there. Nice catch, rack!!

The blinkie had cracked in the usual place, top of the attachment where it clips into the mount. I'm going to email Trek (it is a Disco Inferno) and check at my LBS to see about a replacement, but somehow I see epoxy in my future...

Same thing happened to me. Mine blasted apart after hitting a pot hole. I haven't fixed mine back up yet, but I've got to find a better way. I only found one of the two batteries. Luckily the days got longer. Unfortunately my bike is currently out of commission.

No epoxy needed!! Trek said take it to my LBS. I took it to my LBS and they exchanged the broken Disco Inferno for a new Cat Eye blinkie that is HUGE.

I used to superglue my Cateyes to the seatpost mount bracket.

Now I just use blue (non-permanent) loctite. I re-do the loctite every few months just to be certain it won't fall out.