I've been on the fence about getting a decent rear light. I have a collection of front lights and now considering taking an old 10 watt TrailRat and converting it to rear light status.
Last night I took some transparent red MonoKote (http://www.monokote.com/) and placed it in front of the light and it did a fairly good job of creating a bright red light.

Unfortunately, MonoKote is thin and will probably melt from the heat of the light. Ideally, I'd like to use a piece of red plastic and affix that in front of the light. Sure, it sounds crude, but I think most cars use nothing but a regular 15-20 watt light with a red cover, so my approach is not much different.

Anyone do anything similar? Any suggestion on where to source red plastic?

http://bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=338987

I thought I had seen a recent discussion on this topic. I don't know how helpful it will be, but here it is.

I went and purchased some red theater gel to put over my blackburn quadrant to use as a taillight. In my case it didn't work out so well. The gel I picked was too opaque, and most of the light was filtered out, making a very dim light. If you can find a store that sells theater gel, I would try going in person with your light to make certain that the gel you buy won't dim the light in the process.

It would be more logical to use high power RED leds. Since the red leds emit ONLY red light, so they can produce more red light with much less power.


I would say that some of the new seoul and cree 350mA red leds will be very red and VERY bright. I use one 350mA luxeon which is really crap compared to the seoul and cree leds. I use 2 1800mAh AAs and it has lasted hours.


http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c346/diff_lock_cr-v_awd/head%20taillight/DSC_0412.jpg

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c346/diff_lock_cr-v_awd/head%20taillight/DSC_0411.jpg

Thanks for the suggestions. Theater gel seems to be very similar to the transparent red monokote I've been testing. I think I need to try using several layers and go from there.

diff_lock2, I have no doubt that a LED will serve my purpose. However, this is more of a science project than anything else. Ideally, I want to leverage some old equipment as opposed to buying anymore new stuff. :)