Anyone who is an electonics person with amps and volts out there. Wondering if there is a way to update some old lighting that I have had since 89/90. The front light takes a Halogen Bulb that is 2.5V - 0.5A. The rear is a small screw in style that is 2.5v and 0.3amp. Is there a way to get a brighter bulb like an LED? I'm getting new lights for the road bike, but If these can keep on going, why not use em. They are ok as is, but if they can be improved, i'm all for trying it.



In case anyone remembers them, heres the old lights.



Front bulb image from Cateye, they don't show parts for the rear light since its so old.

Wow, that old Cateye rear light brings back memories, I had some good times with those in my highway-riding days If you have some rechargeable C-cell batteries and a charger, then you could put a higher-powered halogen bulb into that light, it's using a standard bulb design.

I have a Cateye Opticube LED headlight as an emergency headlight, but I think your old HL500 would top it for actual useable light on the roadway. So "upgrading" the light with an LED bulb would probably only give you great runtimes, not an improvement in useable light.

Ahh, and I Googled for "led bulb replacement" to get a reality check. Lookie here: https://www.theledlight.com/ledbulbs.html They're out there, but at those prices you could have a Cateye LD1000 taillight (40-50 hours on 2AA's, steady mode) and be halfway to a 10W Niterider rechargeable headlight system too.

Hope that helps some

Its cheaper and less time consuming for you to just buy LED lights from www.performancebike.com, especially with the 20% off coupon.

I'm surprised those things still work for you. If you open them, especially the rear light, you will see several chromed springy steel connectors that also happen to act as wires to bring power to the bulb, and at least two of them are held together with a small melted plastic post! That's very very cheesy, and if you so much as look at the contact too much, it stops working.

What I'm driving at is, the moment you start hacking the thing, it'll stop working. If you solder something to the steel connector, it'll pop right off, and/or stop working. If you make a LED-based replacement with the butt of an old bulb, yes, it's doable, the circuit is really simple (one LED and one resistor), but it's not worth the effort. As for the front light, you'll never get something brighter than a single bulb with a single led without a well-designed reflector.

In short, get yourself a nice LED front light (my choice would be the Cateye EL-500: it's amazingly bright, long lived, and affordable) and some cheap rear LED light (Walmart is good enough if you're cheap). For under $50, you'll have more than adequate lighting.

Very interesting web site and thanks for the link. You're right, their prices are high enought to make starting with a new light very attractive.

I have a couple of Mag Light AA flashlights but converting them to LED's would costs more than buying my 1 watt LED Princeton Tec Impact XL brand new. There are a lot of cases where upgrading older components costs more than buying a new current product.

Well... the LED upgrades aren't really worth the cost. For that kind of money, you can build your own halogen floodlight system like the The Geek Bike and have 10x the lumens output of the LEDs.

An immediate upgrade for you is to find the Krypton or Xenon bulbs for Mag-Lites. These put out about 2x the light-output as the old vacuum incandescent bulbs. Youcan find them at Home Depot or Big-5 sporting goods stores and are good for about 20 lumens or so.

Another step up from there to 41 lumens output is a higher-power bulb, ni-cad/nimh batteries only: CL618 Carley-lamps

With a little work, you can install li-ion batteries in your light to get 7.2v and run even higher-power bulbs in the 6-10w range:
CL716 Carley-lamps, 6w 129 lumens
CL612 Carley-lamps, 10w 182 lumens
But these will probably melt the plastic housing/reflector in your light.

Battery space has battery packs, chargers, and lights (Including bike specific lights) that are already packaged or you could build your own.

I used some of their NiMH battery packs and chargers to refurbish an old set of Nightsun Halogens that I already had for a fraction of the replacement cost of the old NiCad battery.

https://www.batteryspace.com/index.as...S&Category=499

Replacing Halogen for LED = lose for everything but runtime.

Thanks everyone. I actually have 2 of the front light. I picked up the second one for a couple bucks years ago when the store lost the mount which can be bought for 3 bucks. These just go on the quick trip beater. They work so I Figure i'll use em for a while longer.

I'll be expecting a HL-EL400/TL-LD1000 in my stocking from the wife for the Airborne.

I have looked at the HL-EL500 which seems rather big. The new HL-EL510 is close to the same brightness, not sure if its as massive. Haven't seen one in a store to hold yet.

At this point, yes. But the power and light output of LED's is increasing almost daily. In a few years they will be the standard bike light. Once their light output is sufficient, their runtime and indefinite "bulb" life will let them dominate the market.

Yeah, they're seriously being developed by the auto-industry for headlights. While individual LED output may be low, they can always stack a bunch of them together... This requires a specific design for LEDs rather than retrofitting them into previous sockets.

This thread got me thinking and in the mood to experiment. I have a spare Cateye HL-1600 (rechargeable 2.4W halogen) I took the plunge, and ordered up a selection of Luxeon LED units, a 1W star, a 3W star and a 1W+integrated optics unit. Each of these looks to be suitable to fit within the cateye casing, without permanant modification of the original components, so if this is a failure I still have a backup light, plus a set of expensive xmas tree decorations.

First approach will be simply to adapt each LED to the case, and wire up with a suitable ballast resistor to ensure the correct current in the device. If this shows promise, I'd like to develop a dc-dc convertor to avoid the inefficiencies of the resistor approach.

I will post again when I've had a chance to experiment.


Cheers,

Ed


****************
Oh, I have a history of meddling with this stuff, my other HL-1600 received uprated 2100 mAH niMH AA batteries and a 4.2W bulb a while back. Result:more light for about the same run-time, very satisfactory.

Bump!

Project completed! I will try to post some pictures & beam comparisons if I get a chance.

The adaptation of the Cateye HL-1600 went more or less exactly as anticipated. The bulb holder reflector and lens assembly was removed and a new back plate made from sheet aluminium to replace the reflector, and offer a mounting surface for the LED. The LED used has built in beam forming optics (see picture) and is mounted to a heat sink plate. The heat sink was reshaped slightly to permit positioning and alignment within the clear lens from the lamp and secured to the new backplate using 2mm nuts and bolts. Wiring was completed with a 10 ohm series resistor to take care of the excess battery voltage (around 6.5V in practice) and ensure correct current supply to the LED.

A quick check in the darkroom here at work suggests that this setup has the potential to outperform the 4.2W halogen setup in the "turbocharged" HL1600 that is my main lamp (regular spec was ~2.4W). A few tests on the road will show up any differences. I'm impressed with the brightness and also the blue-wight hue that seem more noticable in traffic, when seen on other bikes, compared to the yellow tones of the halogen illumination.

I'll post back with a ride report soon.

Cheers,

Ed

Thanks for posting the interim results of your experiment. You clearly know more about electronics than I.

OK, for those interested here are some pictures of the conversion:

Because the LED package has its own beam forming optics, integration within the original cateye package was rather straightforward, as described in my earlier post. This can be seen in the picture of the re-assembled light, with the top cover removed. The red heat-shrink sleeving behind the lens assembly contains the ballast resistor. There is also a close-up shot of the lens assembly and a picture of the unit in operation. Unfortunately, I don't have my other lamp with me to attempt a comparison. Another day perhaps.

Tomorrow I hope to be able to post a ride report!

Cheers,


Ed

Ed: You think the light has a much greater effect? How has the power consumption changed? Interesting project... Is the light a really deep blue? I can see the blue fringe in the photo that you took. The LED color issue is one that people have been working on for years. A white light LED technology would make a man very very rich...

Sometimes I see the blue headlights on high-performance sportscars and they irritate my eyes (mostly while driving). I'm not so sure that's the effect I'd want my lighting system to have on a motorist....

General: Do you all think that there's a good market for such specialized devices? This is the sort of business opportunity that interests me as I finish my engineering degree...

It's been fascinating watching this whole project develop. If you don't mind, when you are all done, would give me an idea what it cost, assuming you don't charge for your time?

The reason I ask is that I just bought a NiteRider 7.2W halogen light as a closeout from Nashbar for $30. It was intended to run on 4 C-cells but I substituted a $10 Powersonic 2.9 amp-hour, 6V SLA battery. So for $40 I have an adequately bright rechargable light. Did your project approach that cost?

OK - remember I'm still awaiting to do a road test!

DiegoFrogs: The beam is a blue-tinted white beam, not quite as harsh as the car headlamps you mention - those are high intensity discharge (HID) bulbs. One motivation for the project was the fact that the tint of these lights stands out against the yellowish tint of all the other incandescent bulbs. I don't think it will cause discomfort though.

Hillrider: I started with the light housing, batteries and charger from an original purchase of £25 about 6 years ago for the rechargeable halogen system. The new LED bulb cost £10.50 (about $16, give or take the exchange rate.) Not sure what one would pay in the USA, but probably less, as is generally the case. Other parts I had to hand, including a small amount of sheet aluminium, resistors, wire, nuts & bolts etc, so the cost is all in the bulb for this job. I cant see these "sundries" being terribly expensive though.

OK, I'm off for a night commute to "put my money where my mouth is"

I'll check in again tomorrow,

Cheers,

Ed

Now then!

Here is what I found on the first real test of the converted headlamp. The first section of my evening commute is on a completely unlit road. Visibility was good here, with a slightly wider beam distribution than the original components. This was at the cost of a slightly reduced intensity at the centre of the beam - little difference in practice.

When I came to the urban & lit sections of the ride I noticed an interesting effect. The reflection of the lamp in the glossy paint finish of other vehicles was very noticable, suggesting that I was offering good visibility of my presence to other road users. However, with the halogen bulb, I am used to seeing lots of light come back from red reflectors on vehicles, and also reflective road signs. This effect was less with the LED and I suspect that it is connected with the fact that there is much less orange thru red spectral content in the bulb's output. Visibility of the beam on the road ahead was similar.

On arriving home I set up another test - how do the lamps appear to other road users? Although this is arbitary, I set up my 4.2W halogen and the LED conversion and viewed each in turn from a distance of approx 30 yards. The LED was perceived as much brighter in this test, giving it the edge in visibility in my opinion.

All in all, I think the experiment has been quite successful. The LED is definitely useful in this application and offers some definite advantages:

1, Long life and high mechanical robustness.
2, Improved efficiency, translating to enhanced run-time.
3, Potentially better visibility to other road users.

I'll keep the test unit running for now, as I'm happy using it in place of the halogen bulb unit. If there is a chance I might be able to get some night time pictures.

Cheers,

Ed