Overlooked tail light
 

http://www.amazon.com/Vetta-TSL-C-Fl...owViewpoints=1

I hardly ever see this tail light recommended but it is the best value for the money IMHO. 4 AA's and 20 LED's for around $50 is a lot of light. I have used it for 2 winter of night riding with zero problems. Using the Vetta on high or low in conjunction with a Cateye LD600 in flash mode is an awesome combination. Vetta flash mode is powerful also. Some think the Vetta blinks too slowly but I think that it is effective at it's brightness level.

This one is brighter then the Vetta:

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...s/Sette316.jpg

I think about the best self-contained sub-$50 taillight on the market right now is the Radbot 1000. It's twice as bright as the Superflash (1 watt versus 1/2 watt).

'Course, if you're gonna have a headlight too, and go for the Magicshine, Geoman sells the MagicShine taillight for $29, same price as the Radbot, and that fries anything short of a Dinotte (it's the same brightness as the Dinotte 140L).

The Radbot also has a much wider beam. Unfortunately I'm 0 for 2 on them, they turn off by themselves. Even when soft-mounted to a bag. I'm tempted to send the second one back and ask them to give me one that's been field-proven to stay running on their own personal bikes ;)

I have about 6 rides with my Radbot, no problems with it switching off.. It mounts nicely using the topeak seatpacks, just clip and go..

This seems to be a problem unique to you. I ride over cobblestones every day with mine, and ever banged the hell out of them on a softcover book to see if they would switch off, and they don't, no matter how hard they are shaken of knocked around.

Contact PDW, they have great CS and will sort it out.

I've not had that experience -- dozens of rides since I started using the Radbot 1000 mid summer and not a single unexpected turn off. Does yours require that you press and hold for a couple seconds to turn it on? If not, you have an early model and may find the recent model solves your observed problem.

The newest Radbot apparently requires you to hold the button down a while to turn on/off, though I don't know if interrupting the battery will cause it to turn off.

That's the one PDW sent me to replace my faulty first-gen unit, and it turns off by itself too. The guys at PDW wanted to help, but the lights aren't cooperating.

My bicycle came with this. I am going to upgrade it though soon.

http://www.aofw.co.uk/images/535.jpg

I am going to replace it with the busch & müller 4D-Lite Plus. Both are fender lights and run off the front generator. the 4d-lite plus is B & M's best rear light (it has a stand light!!).

http://www.aofw.co.uk/images/BM-4D-Lite-Plus.jpg

Once again; this problem seems unique to you. What did PDW say when you contacted them about this reoccurring problem?

cycocommute (spelling?) reports the same thing. PDW said the problem was the contacts on the first batch of lights, and offered to replace it (I bought it directly from them). I waited a couple months, then asked for my replacement. It does the same thing. I wish they were working out for me, because it would be a great light if it would stay running.

Contact them again. By all accounts their lights are now solid. What does griping about it on the internet solve?

It's quite clear that it's not a common problem, and that they have top notch customer service. It's almost as if you don't want to fix the problem but instead bad mouth them out of some form of retribution.

After waiting a few months for their lights to become "solid" before taking delivery of a replacement, and getting one that turns itself off while sitting on top of my refrigerator overnight (not to mention when it's supposed to be protecting my life), I'm calling it like I see it. Out of curiosity, have you conducted any reliability research, such as a poll? Or sold a few dozen to your customers?

What I'll do, to give them a third chance, is ask them if they'd like to send a prepaid call tag to pick up the replacment they sent me, so they can examine it and figure out why their taillight doesn't stay on.

Why are you bad mouthing them on the internet when they're more than willing to accommodate you?

As I said before, this seems like a unique issue for you. There are plenty of people with this light here on BF, and the vast majority report it as being solid. I know the two I use are.

I'm not badmouthing them. In fact, I did the opposite: I said that they wanted to help. But the facts are the facts: both of my Radbot 1000s failed.

And if you had your way, you'd silence those of us whose Radbots are NOT "solid," so that we don't disrupt the harmony for the rest of you. Think about it. This is supposed to be safety equipment; it's not a service to anyone to hush up the failures.

Do you think that's indicative of their lights in general? I've seen you post this time and again.

Yet you don't want to find a solution to your problem, you simply wish to spread fear and doubt about a product that the vast majority (actually everyone who has one but you as far as I can tell) finds to be reliable. What's your motivation in doing that, especially if the company is willing to make good and give you another light?

Every company has a bad item or two slip thorough quality control, it's how they handle it that makes all the difference. It doesn't seem that you are willing to let PDW make it right for you, and instead with to exact some sort of revenge on them by bad mouthing them on various forums.

Why are you taking that road as opposed to letting them actually solve the problem?

By that logic, anyone who makes repetitive remarks about a product is either a shill (for good remarks) or on a vendetta (for bad ones). I suggest you stop taking it at a personal level.

What else am I to think if you refuse to seek solutions?

Let me put it this way:

You're a skydiver. Your main parachute fails. Fortunately, your reserve chute works. You contact the company and of course they're eager to help. They send you a replacement chute. It fails too. You double-check to make sure you're not overlooking anything, but it continues to fail and force you to use your reserve chute.

At this point, no matter how eager the company might be to give you more new chutes, are you going to keep entrusting your life to their product? How many times before you say "enough?"

As for "solutions," I invested in a DiNotte 300R. Solution reached. ;)

I for one am glad that people like mechBgon share their bad experiences with a company. While it seems they are willing to try to help, they replaced a defective product with another defective product. As a taillight is an essential (not to mention legally required) nighttime safety device that is inexcusable!

As for him "refusing to seek solutions", he asked for a replacement and was given another defective unit! I really don't see what more should be expected of a consumer. Should he continue to ask for replacements until he gets a good unit? Personally I think he made the right choice by going with a different company after receiving another defective unit.

Wow, what a dreadful comparison. Death isn't certain if you don't have a light whist riding at night.

Anyway, as I recollect you didn't want to replace the first light you got from them with the known bad contacts, even though you knew they would replace it. You simply wanted to complain on various forums. I suspect that for whatever reason you don't want a solution so you can continue to gripe about a product that you felt 'did you wrong'.

All I know is that I have a Radbot 1000 and it has been working fine.. If it had problems, I would let people know..

Things slip through quality control with all companies, it's how they react that matters, and mechBgon is more interested in dragging the company through the mud in threads that they are mentioned in than actually doing anything to change the situation.

Personally it seems to me that he has some sort of grudge against the company as he started to complain about them before he even tried to contact them to make things right. How odd to take it to the internet before trying to find a solution.

You'd better not! Someone might take offense!

Your opinion is incorrect. I think you're just having a defensive reaction because you like your Radbots a lot. I'd like mine too, if they'd behave.

No, my opinion is based on you bad mouthing a product on the internet before you even gave the company a chance to make it right. That says a lot about you, and how you operate.

Let's see... I bought a first-generation Radbot directly from PDW using PayPal, at full price, instead of waiting to buy it at wholesale from our distributors. It had a problem. I reported my initial experience to other BikeForums members about the facts of the problem. And I was right to do so, since PDW themselves then acknowledged that there was a design problem with the first-generation model. So I think you should be grateful for the fact that you now have working second-generation Radbots with the improved design.

The fact is that my second-gen unit doesn't work. I'm not going to pretend that didn't happen, but neither do I go out of my way to say the company are bad guys. They're just a marketing company, they don't actually make the light. Anyway, we all have our threshold for how many times we want to jump through the hoops, and I've reached mine, so the most I feel like doing at this point is to let them send a call tag for the second bad one if they want to investigate. It's up to them.

Yeah last night was the first time I experienced "auto shut off" with the MS "mystery switch tail light. I thought it did not make any difference how much rotation you gave the light to affect an "on of off" setting but apparently - you can indeed turn it "barely on" and have it go off without warning.

Like I said though, first time it happened in 40 or more operations.

Of some note -if you examine the beam of a MS tail light you'll be amazed to find a "sliver of intense light" at as much 150 degrees off-axis. I've never seen this is any other light - of any brand.

I seem to remember you not wanting to contact them in the first place. Seems that you are a bit upset about your bad luck with these lights and want to make it out that it's an inherently faulty product, which all the other user info from the second generation lights says it's not. Why would you want to do that?

Sounds like a good exchange of information to me. A problem with a product is a problem. I am glad that there are people that are willing to "review" products and share with the rest of us. Isn't that what Consumer Reports does?. Just go anywhere on the net and you can get reviews on almost anything.
Check out Epinions for example.
I won't buy any major product until I check it out to see how the folks feel about it. Then I make my decision.
Ziemas, why are you so defensive? It's just another mans opinion to which he is entitled.