Turning a headlight into a taillight
 

My 6V 10+20w SLA halogen lamp is starting to die(the switches are starting to go on the head unit), so I went and bought a princeton tec switchback 3 light to replace it. Given what I've seen about high powered LED lights and battery life, the chances that I'll need an oh-****! light has gone down quite a bit. Oh-****! light as in "oh-****! the the batteries on the halogen are dead!". My oh-**** light was a blackburn quadrant, a decent be-seen light, but useless for riding at speeds above 8mph. However, it got me thinking. Could I turn this light from a headlight to a tail light with theater gel or some other red colored product? My main concern is how water resistant theater gels are. Has anyone tried this? What were your results?

I was in wallyworld this morning, and I did see some LED lights that came with red or blue filters that could be snapped into them. Anyhow, I've seen a number of automobiles that have had taillights "fixed" with a red tape. Not hugely transparent, but that would be my first attempt. Second might be to find a red dry erase marker, and scribble on the inside of the lense. Lastly would be to maybe find an old dead LED alarmclock, they usually have a RED filter of some sort--a large red plastic bit.

The coloring on the gels is waterproof, it's part of the plastic. One layer may leave a pretty washed shade of red, whereas two might dim things too much, experimentation may be in order.

So probably that means I should pick a deep shade of red, right?

Update:

I bought a deep red sheet of gel, and tried wrapping the quadrant with it. It basically just turned the quadrant into a very weak tail light--so no dice.

not sure if you have a glass blowing studio near you, but they might be able to form a flat sheet of deep red colored glass for you....

EDIT: do you have the dimensions of the lens you need??

When I looked at the quadrant, I thought if I could tint the lens red cheaply, I might have a very powerful tail light for not much money. After seeing just how dim it was after the fact, I realize that it wasn't as bright as I thought. My 20w halogen on the other hand......;)

gels are made from plastic, they are not going to disintegrate in water, i use them all the time, for my schools plays, gels usually go inside a light like that, try to open it up and put it on the back of the lense

I used a jetbeam c-le with some red tape. Compare it to the Superflash in the same picture.

http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/2...ightks9.th.jpg

I wanted to create orange side lights on my LED setup..at the bottom here:
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/...d.php?t=171415

I mixed up some normal epoxy and added a few drops of yellow food coloring.
Poured some out and sat the end of the light in it. Good effect.

You could use red and dip the quadrant in it. Maybe coat with release agend first, then you will be able to peel it off if you're not happy.

Plan B would be to put high brightness red LEDs in.

Car parts tores sell a red film to tape over broken tail-lights. I'd try that.

Red acrylic paint?