Foo - Homemade lighting troubles.

Bikeforums.net is a forum about nothing but bikes. Our community can help you find information about hard-to-find and localized information like bicycle tours, specialties like where in your area to have your recumbent bike serviced, or what are the best bicycle tires and seats for the activities you use your bike for.



PDA

View Full Version : Homemade lighting troubles.

roughrider504
08-12-07, 02:26 PM
Recently I converted two all metal bicycle lights to run on batteries. Normally these run on generator power, but I don't quite like tire dynamos. For extra light I used two of them. Bought one of those 6v D cell battery packs from radioshack and after a little soldering it worked great, for a little while at least. See, when the lights are not mounted, they work when separated. When you touch them together they ground together and the lights go out. Went ahead and mounted them anyway [both fork mounted lights] and they ground when you turn them on. Just as a test I removed one light and it worked fine. Would a plastic mount fix this problem? Anything else?

Tom Stormcrowe
08-12-07, 02:41 PM
Why not use a large dry cell in a bottle rack, attach the ground from the battery with a wire for a grounding strap to the mounting bolt, run the hot lead to the lights and use the normal floating ground as designed with the single hot lead split for the two lights and frame ground the lights?

Here's a quick and dirty diagram:
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o260/TomStormcrowe/Diagram004.jpg
Stacey
08-12-07, 04:15 PM
If they go out when they touch it would seem that one light is wired backwards. Check your work. :)

wfin2004
08-12-07, 04:59 PM
If they go out when they touch it would seem that one light is wired backwards. Check your work. :)


Stacey, you keep surprising me all the time with your knowledge. Count me down with Stacey!
Stacey
08-12-07, 06:08 PM
Heh, heh... I'm more than just a pretty face. :D