Commuting - Buildin me own lite!

I have a friend who is into electronice, and he also commutes to work on an old Avanti Road bike :p and he is helping me build my own headlight

So far he has sent me to buy:
12V 20W Halogen light with 10deg beam with holder etc
Inline fuse holder
5A slow blow fuse
2 core flex with a rating of a few Amps.

Then when I have that sorted (going to havbe a little bit of switch gear etc) we shall move onto the batts.....going to get Lead Acid or something, wire them together and chuck them in an old bottle and use a space filler around them :D

I shall let you know how this goes

Brendon
:beer:

I made my own lighting system, but I used a ready made bicycle dynamo lamp. The light distribution on modern lamps is specially designed for cycling and makes more efficient use of the light than a typical sealed beam unit. A 6v, 3w system works fine for me.
I used crimp connectors, and used a charger which can flip from bulk charge to trickel (ie a constant voltage charger).
Ive used mine daily for 4 years, but I did get a new battery

I use a Vista 10w 6v headlight. I buy my batteries from Batteries Plus (a local battery store chain) and did my own wiring and found a charger. I saved quite a bit of money doing that and I've been using it for over 20 years.

There are a few pages around about building lights. A google search will help with some further ideas.

Where in Auckland do you live, NZL? I loved that city when I visited.

West, where the good hills are :p

Brendon

I built one from some of the same components you list. I used an under the sink plastic drain fixture for the lamp holder, a 5A 12V sealed lead acid battry and small swich mounted in the pipe fitting to turn on and off. I only spent 20-25 US$ on the whole settup (I already had a 12V charger due to my model airplane hobbies, this would add some to the proce) and it works great. One thing I would suggest is to buy the bulbs with a glass front and paint the back of the bulb reflector with several coats of silver paint or you will get a lot of feed back light. SLA battries are cheep, heavy and can't be fast charged. You can use NiMH or NiCAD battries if you will edcuate yourself as to how to properly feed and care for them they work great.
I am using a Solo Logic from Light and Motion and love it. Most of the time on the road I only use the 6W setting.

Good luck!

If you want to save some weight on batteries, try some NiMH AA batteries wired in series. They aren't too expensive, much lighter than SLA, and more environmentally friendly. You can buy battery holders to pack them together. You might just try a 10W bulb. 20W is probably overkill for road riding and will run down your battery faster. If you want to be more visible add a blinky LED headlight like the Catey EL-200.