$300 is ridiculous for a light, especially when it's aimed in my eyes coming the other direction

If one is doing a 600k ride which involves highway riding for much of the night, a bright light can be very nice and decrease eye strain. It can also allow for much faster desccents which is a plus on a long ride and saves your brakes, and in some cases prevents blowouts due to overheated rims from having to ride slow. $300 is where you start getting into HID bikelights that will actually run for a useful amount of time in this situation (that would be 9 hours of burntime, 4 hours is doable with a backup light for the shorter 300 and 400k rides but just barely). As far as brightness my HID is no brighter than a car headlight and when aimed properly does not blind anymore than a car headlight does. That being said I would never use my HID on a bike path with other people around, I think it is a good thing for the serious cyclists who ride in the 18 - 20 mph range at night on the street but not so much a good solution for mister Casual out for a relaxing evening ride on the local MUP blinding everyone he sees.

By the way, great username. Always remember, "no matter where you go...... there you are!" and "Hey, don't pull on that, you don't know what it could be connected to".

didn't want to knock the value of the right equipment for the right situation. some people and their lights are a personal pet peeve on my commute and it seems you can relate. great quotes

You should look at this before you buy one.

https://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=78470

Evidently there are many frustrated tt owners out there. It appears that the tt company lacks the expertise to design and implement a reliable control unit for the light. The link indicates they are on a 3rd generation controller which is still problematic. Batteryspace has a workaround: they sell the light with a lower voltage battery, which eliminates the need for the controller ( is 11v vs 14.4v, i think, working from memory). Pros: no controller failure, no loss of light and return hassle, lighter battery to carry, lower cost, longer lamp life. Cons: lamp is not overdriven, so less light produced.

Based on what i've read, it seems like TT is not going to work out the controller problem soon, so the lower voltage light is probably the better choice.

btw did you notice the 30w mr16 sized hid lamp theyre selling now, only slightly more expensive than the 10w mr11 size lamp. you'd need a bigger battery to keep her going for long, so $.

i think that 30w would be ideal for offroad use. btw you need wider beam angle for offroad than road. on roads you could blind driver, but then again you need to put some into their eyes to wake em up. i think the 12 deg hid would work on roads but i havent used one personnally. the halogens i've used range from 10-24 degrees, which seems to work ok. the quality of the light beam from mr11/mr16 halogen lamps varys widely so hard to judge.

l&m lights have an excellent reputation, but they've made some some duds too. lights are their only business, i expect they have more expertise than TT and would provide better cust service. this is partly what you get when you purchase a $500 hid sys from them.

below is link to a good resource for bicycle lighting. the author makes a strong case for diy lights utilizing mr16 lamps and sla batteries. stuff you can buy at lowes/hd/walmart. for under fifty bucks if you dont object to a 4 lb battery and a distinctly diy looking light.

https://nordicgroup.us/s78/#Myths%20a...ting%20Systems

15-20w halogen has proven adequate for my needs, but i would love to have some li batteries and an hid lamp.

Overdriving a HID doesn't make more bright, it just burns out the ballast. The light itself runs on fairly high voltage (I think they need several hundred volts to start, and around 100V to run) which is switched up by the ballast from the input voltage. Since that's a solid state regulator, it runs the light on the same voltage regardless of the input voltage. I did some testing with mine and the light runs the same brightness until it kicks out, all the way from 14.5v down to about 7 volts (where I stopped the test; the light was still running but the voltage was dropping by 0.2 volts per second, and I didn't want to damage the battery).

The problem with overvolting is that the ballast is only designed to handle up to about 14.8V, and if you give it more than that, you're stressing and overheating the components.

Overdriving works with incandescent lamps because it makes the filament burn hotter.

I have a TrailTech light. I bought just the light, and at first hooked it straight to my 14.4V NiMH battery. It ran about 6 hours before frying the ballast.

When they say "14.8V max input" do not assume that a 14.4v battery is OK. If you put a voltmeter on there, you'll find that a 14.4v NiMH puts out nearly 16 volts at first, and doesn't drop below the max 14.8v for over an hour (on my 4.5 AH pack with the HID and a strobe turned on).

I sent it back, TrailTech replaced it, and then I hooked it to a 12V battery instead. It ran all winter and is still fine. On the 14.4v battery it ran very warm to the touch; on the 12V it's a tiny bit warm but hard to tell.

If you buy a TT light and hook it to a 12V NiMH it should do fine.

Bottom line: if you use it the way they say to use it, you'll be fine.