hey,

I have a Jet Lites handlebar mounted headlight. It's damn bright. Out before sunrise, I've had cars (that would probably have pulled into the road in front of me) stop with me a good 100 yards away. They must've thought I was a motorcycle or something. Jet Lites customer support is good too. If you call, you talk directly to Jim, the owner.

For a tail light, I just bought a Cat-eye TL-LD1000 today. Thing looks like a red disco ball when the lights are blinking full force. When I turned the thing on in the bike shop, I was seeing spots after turning if off, like someone just took a flash picture... pretty sweet!

later.

cool deal...I'll be looking for a tail light at the LBS.

True, if you can afford it, get this, dual HID. Equivalent to 100 watts of halogen. Only $900.

http://www.supernova-lights.com/en/p...99d/index.html

Wowwww I want

NiteRider makes a great bike light. 10 or 15 watts is enough light to see your way on the road or on a trail. They also sell dual beams. But their brightest lights are HID bulbs, at about 350-400 $$. This company is based in San Diego. The lights come with a lightweight battery pack that you tie to the cross tube. They can also be helmet-mounted.
Some of them are digital and have a digital readout display of battery power levels. The batteries generally take between 5 and 9 hours to charge, and they run between 2:20 and 4 hours, depending on usage and intensity.

if you don't need 3 or 4 hours runtime it is cheap to buid a brigher and better light system then what you get in a HID light. my system only runs for about 1.5 hours but at 35 watts if halogen light and a real white light it is far briger then any normal HID light. and it cost less to build. plus the charger is a far better charger that takes only a couple hours (it would take less but I used two battery packs) the disadvange is a shorter runtime and more weight for the batteries. but if I chose a small light and then overvolted it more i would get a whiter light more light and longer runtimes. but I like the beam pattern of the 35w lamp I use.
you coulr run a 40 watt halogen system for about 200.00 thats with really good batteries and a real good charger and a good computer controller to control it.

that's asinine.

That seriously just goes to show how much you pay extra just to have a name brand attatched to your products. It's completely lame but seems to be a fact of life.

Yup....oh well that's life.

Kevin dude, your away message is still on, on AIM.

yep it is cheap tp make really bright lights from easy to find parts. I am no electrial guro I just asked the right person for help. all of the lights even the HID lights don't have great chargers. a good rc charger costs about 40.00 and will charge a pack in a hour or so. but most HID setups take 3.5 hours. and a spare charger is atelast 100.00
there are a couple good LED setups that can replace halogen lights but right now the companies are only in the UK and that makes the price the same as a HID light. though the runtiems are better.
lights and safty and chain lube are pretty cheap things I cna play with. I plan on trying out some might headlight configurations too. though it's too expensive to play with battery setups.

I have to disagree; You get what you pay for in a light system. There are huge differences in quality between the cheapest light sets, and the gold standard brands like NiteRider and Light & Motion. I've used all different types of systems from a homemade $30 solution, to bike lights from $50, to $100, $200 and can say, L & M blows them away in quality. You have to realize that the brightness and wattage of the bulb is not all that matters. The quality of the build is probably more important to a serious user than the wattage. Sure you can rig up a 35W bulb and a huge battery and it will give plenty of light...but is it waterproof, crashproof, and will it be around after turning the switch ON and OFF several hundred times? Not if it's a POS system. Cheap lights may be fine for the occasional night rider, but for anyone who does regular night riding, a reliable system, along with a backup LED is a big plus. I've been on many a group ride when a beginers' budget light system fails in the middle of the cold night...not fun for the rest of the group that has to come up with a fix :rolleyes:

edit to add a little more....One of the guys who I ride with has a pretty well built homemade system that's fairly reliable. It's like 40 watts, and is very bright. He uses the homemade system to supplement his NiteRider 20 W system for really fast sections, or downhills. I don't think he would ever use it as his only light though. ....just my 2 cents

Why buy a light system, they're horrendously overpriced anyways. Build your own.

maybe I should not have used the word cheat but inexpensive. I use the best connectors out there for my setup. I have a great computer controled system custom made for what I want fully sealed and it uses a magnet to control it so there is no switch to fail. I use the best sanyo cells out there. a very good computer controlled charger that no HID light charger can come close to matching. I use good bulbs that if in an emergancy and I don't have a spare can be bought at most lighting and home improvement stores. the housing is a car fog light housing that is steel and only 20.00 for a set of two.
yes mine is fully waterproof and as crashproof as any. bulb preplacemnt is easy and the unit does not have to be sent in like the L&M does (by the way it has pretty poor optics too) pretty much all the parts on my light can be bought at several places locally. can you say the same thing? when I did it I read up on it and talked to the experts and then did it right.
I have far more control over beam angle brightness light color and runtime then any commercial product out there. I can rewire it so I can put the cells anywhere I want and i can charge the cells really fast or really slow or antyhing inbetween.

You have to compare like with like, if you want to perform a useful comparison. One of the problems with the light comparisons on this site is the constant switching of topics-- from cheaper per lumen to "brighter" to "more convenient or whatever. The discussion here is informal, so this is to be expected, but to get the best overall picture you really do need to keep in mind that there are various factors that matter to riders and different kinds of commercial lights represent different tradeoffs of those factors.

Now, it's possible to buy a *100 watt* halogen spotlight for under $40. That thing is brighter than any HID bike headlamp commercially available (though not as bright as the HID spotlights). It's a lot brighter than your car headlamp. So, obviously it's possible to generate more light per dollar with halogen than with HID.

Of course, the spotlight weighs at least seven pounds, has a reflector the size of a dinner plate, and has a run time of about 45 minutes.

The point is that when it comes to bike lights, lumens-per-dollar is not the only important consideration. Space and weight are at a premium on a bike, so those things matter, too.

HID lights give you much more light per unit of weight and volume than halogen do. But they're more expensive.

These facts can work themselves out in a variety of ways. If most cyclists didn't mind lugging around all of the weight Steve Knight carries for his halogen lamps, it would be possible to have HID lamps that put out staggering amounts of light. Such a system would be a *lot* brighter than halogen lights connected to the same power supply.

The commercial HID lamps seem to think that riders look at things differently. L&M seem to think that the 675 lumens their ARC puts out is enough for most riders, on or off road. So, their lights are a lot lighter, more convenient to deal with, and have a longer burn time than halogen lights that put out the same amount of light at at time. Again, reducing these properties compared to halogen is possible because of the basic fact that HID provide more light per unit of power than do halogen lights.

If you don't care about weight, size, and convenience, then halogen have no disadvantages compared to HID. But most people do. So, using halogen will result in some disadvantages for most people.

On the other hand, halogen lights are significantly cheaper than HID lamps.

I don't know what to say about SK's charger claims and all that. If you look at the commercial lights, though, the high end halogen Jet Lites are a decent comparison to the L&M ARC light. I don't have the time to compare them in detail, but if you do you'll see the fundamental facts of lumens-per-dollar and lumens-per-watt reflected in their relative advantages and disadvantages. The Jet is probably brighter at its very brightest, but it has a much shorter run time at that brightness than the L&M. The Jet is heavier, all things considered, and takes up more room on the bar with its lamps. But the Jet is cheaper.
And so on.

Halogen bike lights would be an even better bargain if higher end rechargeable lights were in greater demand. The halogen spotlight I mentioned earlier can be bought at sporting goods stores. $40. If rechargeable halogen lights were popular enough to be sold at WalMart, the way spotlights are, they'd probably be about half the price they are now.

thats for sure.

I see where you're coming from here. I'm sure it's possible to build a good home made system. I'm just saying, like Merriwether, that when you compare systems, realize there is a difference between cheap and expensive. There is a reason why the high end systems cost so much. From what you describe, I guess I'd rather have your system, then a over the counter $100 system, whether it be Halogen, HID, or whatever.. But I'm sure you wouldn't build me one.

I learned about the lights from a pro who has all of the tools to measure lumens and beam angles and such. he has tested most of the HID setups and his home made halogen and some of the LED setups. it is really the only way to really know unless you can buy the systems and try them out side by side.
so I knwo what my setup can do.
I could have went a different way hindsight is 20/20 and gotten the same sized sells most HID setups have. I would have just used a 20 watt bulb and overvolted it to 16v and I would have gotten 40 watts of light out. it would give me a longer runtime then my 35 watt light.
going by the lumens L&M says that the light puts out will lead you astray. most light companies make claims that they could never meet. but thats typical of marketing in general.
my battereis fit in a water bottle and a lot of HID and regular halogens do the same. though my cells weigh 2# vereses mabye 1# or more for a HID setup. the light I use is bigger but it puts more light on the road and I can use a wider beam then you can with most setups. so i can light a whole lane really bright. and I light three other lanes off to the sides at the same time. so cars have no problem seeing me at all. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...ADME:X:ON:US:2
though mine does not have the display. I can charge from 4 to 8 cells of different types so it will charge a lot of packs. tells me if a pack is bad too.
light systems in general are way too expensive for the average buyer. I seldom see anyone with a good light commuting. they just cost too much. a spare slow carger for my L&M commuter light I started with was 50.00 I could get one from rat shack for 12.00 a space battery pack is almost as much as the whole light. L&M will not even sell you cable extensions so you can't mount the cells where you want.

I don't really mind the commercial systems but they really cost too much for what they are. I wanted (though did I really need a HID or what I have?) but I could not afford it.
the new generation LED lights will soon blow away HID lights. they will cost elss they are whiter and the last longer and they have longer runtimes. but will commercial companies make them? thats the question. the problem is there is not enough demand for cost effective bike lights to really make companies get on the ball and improve their lights and bring the price down. only small companies are doing it now.

BicycleLights/Laser Edge sells a nice dual beam system for about $89.

L&M's claims are realistic, though. They say their 13.5 watt light gives out 675 lumens, which is 50 lumens per watt.

That's a realistic performance, given the uncontroversial performance of HID lights measured in a variety of applications. The larger industrial HID lamps can do 80 lumens per watt or more. Some of the high end lamps put out more than 100 lumens per watt. HID do decline somewhat in lumen-watt efficiency as the lamp gets smaller, so smaller bike lamps would be expected to put out approximately what L&M say.

And yes, lumens themselves are a somewhat imprecise measure, since lumens, as standardized or as adjusted in various ways, are supposed to be relative to human vision. Still, they're not so imprecise as to make them meaningless given responsible measures.

Furthermore, if you see the L&M light, and you compare it to a 13 watt halogen lamp that you know puts out about 25 lumens per watt, you'd see that L&M's estimate is about right, too.

To return to the larger topic, though, HID put out more lumens per watt than halogen, whether halogen are overvolted or not. Don't take my word for it. There is ample information easily available to verify this. Here's a power company's comparison of various lighting types (offered as a recommendation of compact flourescent lights over HID, by the way):

http://www.bchydro.com/business/inve...igate3668.html

Notice that the Metal Halide lamps (HID) are rated at more than double the lumens per watt of halogen lamps. Now, there's no separate entry for "overvolted" halogen lamps, but overvolting halogen bulbs doesn't increase lumen-watt efficiency by more than about 20% or so. It certainly doesn't increase efficiency by more than 100%!

Again, though, halogen have an important advantage over HID (and any other lighting system now available, too). They're cheap. They're the best way to make lumens per dollar, by far.

fascinating

This topic ended going infinitely deeper than I could have ever envisioned. Very interesting information, though.

when you overvold a halogen it gets very effient. a 20 watt 12v bulb at 16v will put out just about 40 watts of light. but it uses less power then a 40 watt halogen bulb. though the life of the bulb is reduced to about 20 to 30 hours. add more power and you get better results. but a bigger benifit is you get a whiter light too. though this formula works with HID lights it's not real practical to do it. most of the halogen systems are overvolted a ltitle bit. but it takes a good controller to do it right. and I don't think companies would get too far if they told people about the bulb life and charged then the usual 20.00 for a replacement bulb. where you can get the same bulb for around 3.00 if you know where to look.

not too bad of a setup. though getting a better charger would improve it alot.