Lights: Part 4

After returning the CatEye EL320 headlight I decided to get the light I wanted from Amazon. I ended up getting a combo pack of the Planet Bike Blaze 1 Watt and the Superflash taillight. Yes, I already have a Superflash tail light. And, now that the SL-One headlight is working again, I have two headlights as well. My plan is to have one of the headlights AND one of the taillights on flashing mode and the other on constant. The idea is that this will make me more visible and allow people that are approaching me to better judge the distance between us.

From Bike Pics

The Blaze 1 Watt and Superflash combo pack is a great value. Sold together they run about $55.00. The stand alone Blaze 1 Watt light is white; the combo pack version is black. Also, the Superflash in the combo pack is the Stealth version, which is black with a clear lens. Not that that matters, but it is in keeping with the black and silver and titanium coloring of my bike...

I rode to an appointment downtown this morning and used the old red and white Superflash and the Blaze, both in flash mode. It was sprinkling on the way in and drizzling on the way home. (I'm on vacation this week, so I'm not sure how often I'll be able to ride. My parents are in town from Maine...) The on/off button on the blaze is pretty solid and seems leak proof. It is mounted on the LED portion of the light, just ahead of the heat sink. Apparently the LED used in this light gets pretty hot...

So, while I have the mounts for both headlights on my bike, I don't plan on using the Serfas light much until I work out a way to cover up on on/off button a little bit. I'm thinking electrical tape or a ziplock bag. Or both.

As far as light output, the Blaze and SL-One are surprisingly similar. The SL-One has a strong center beam with a dim halo around it. Same goes for the Blaze, but the Blaze's center beam was brighter and a little bigger, while its halo area wasn't as strong. It will be interesting to see how they compare on a late summer evening.

So that raps up my light fiasco. I tried four different headlights. The first one broke; the second one was lost; the third I returned and the fourth seems just right. And the first is now fixed.

I have been considering getting another Flea, since I still have the charger and it was a decent 'be seen' light. Despite all of the trouble I had with it, it might make a good second light (or in this case, third light).

My gear is pretty much set at this point. I may add clipless pedals and shoes over the summer. We'll have to see how it goes. I will probably opt for pedals that have cleats on one side and platforms on the other. This would let me wear my waterproof hikers without switching the pedals out.

Serfas Comes Through!

I received the replacement battery cage for the SL-One today. Popped in the batteries and the light works again! Serfas was really cool about it. One email, they asked for my address and shipped it out. Good service doesn't quite make the product better, but it goes a long way towards keeping your customers happy.

I'm going to try putting some electrical tape over the button to see if it will keep the rain out of the battery compartment.

So now I have two headlights... And two taillights. What's the OTHER, new light? Coming right up...

Lights: Part 3

In search of a replacement for the Blackburn Flea light that I had lost, I started looking on the Internet. I was looking for some thing that was in the $30 to $40 range, could be taken on and off the bike easily and used conventionally batteries. After a couple of random Google searches, I came up with mostly nothing. Amazon turned out to have a lot of user reviews so I went there for advice.

I really like the Planet Bike Blinky SuperFlash tail light that I have. It has worked flawlessly since I bought it at Cycle Works along with the Serfas SL-One last summer. I also have PB Freddy Hardcore Fenders and they donate 25% of their profits to bicycle advocacy. These factors led me to reviews of Planet Bike headlights and specifically to the Blaze 1 watt. This light has some great reviews and, combined with my experience with their other products, I was sold.

I did look at other products, specifically the Cat-Eye lights and the Topeak lights. Cat-Eye was the only name that I remember from 'back in the day' and I'm pretty happy with my Topeak Trunk Bag and Explorer Rack. The Topeak lights seemed a little expensive and the Cat-Eye reviews were all over the map. So I resolved to find the Planet Bike Blaze 1-Watt at one of the local bike shops.

I stopped by Sunflower and was pretty disappointed to find that they only carried Trek lights, the Blackburn Flea lights and the $100 to $300 HID lights that had separate battery packs. The Trek lights were in my price range, but I hadn't read anything about them and I'm a little leery of accessories made by bike manufacturers. I did look them over; they had one that was a cluster of 3 LEDs, which tend to not be as bright as the 1-Watt models. Without any more info on Trek lights, I left Sunflower.

A couple of days later I made it over to CycleWorks. They had the same high-end lights as Sunflower, but they also carried the CatEye brand and the Blackburn Fleas. (They no longer carry the SL-One that I bought there last summer.) One of they guys there recommended a small CatEye with three LEDs. They also had a bigger single LED model, the EL 320. I remembered reviews of that light from Amazon as being a mixed bag, but thought I'd try it out. So I bought the EL320.

From Bike Pics

When I got the light home, the first thing that I did was put batteries in it. The batter cover was a cheap plastic that was hard to remove. And I noticed that there was no gasket around the cover at all. None. How does this thing keep water out? I already had one light go south on me due to water seepage, so I was a little sensitive to that.

Mounting the light was relatively easy. It has strap that feeds through a plastic dial. Turn the dial to tighten the strap and cut off the excess. (Which I didn't do; I used my batteries and left the strap as is. I wanted to be able to return it with no questions...)

So I'm already not in love with this thing, but what kind of light did it put out? Well, as luck would have it, I was heading out to a friend's house across town to help him paint. I used the flashing mode on the way over there. Not much to say about that as it was still daylight out.

On the way home, I used the headlight to navigate and it was ok. Pretty comparable to the SL-One, I thought. The light is bigger than the SL-One, so I expected a bit more from it. The beam was bright at the center but it fell off pretty quickly to a dim illumination to the sides. Again, it was OK. However, given my other reservations about the light, there was no way that I was keeping it. I brought it back to CycleWorks the next day and they took it back no problem. I did point out that there was no gasket to battery compartment as my main complaint with the light.

So, back to square one. What was I going to get to replace the Flea?

Lights: Part 1, Update

Over the weekend I sent an email off to the Serfas support line explaining the corrosion problem with my SL-One headlight. They contacted me Tuesday morning asking for my address so they could ship out a new battery cage for the SL-One as a warranty repair. I'll update here when I get the part and let you know if the light works again...

Lights: Part 2

From Bike Pics

My second light was pretty neat; it was a Blackburn Flea headlight. This little bugger put out 40 lumens and was about the size of a dollar coin. It has four LEDs on it and alternated between low, high and flashing modes, just like the Serfas light did. The really cool bit was that it was an entirely enclosed light. The battery inside it was charged via two little metal contacts on the bottom of it. You attached this little set of magnetic lead wires to a 1.5v battery. These wires were attached to a device that matched-up to the contacts on the Flea. Cute little system and lots of oohing and aahing about how cool it is. Accept And deservedly so.

From Bike Pics

Accept when the battery dies while you're on your bike. See, that cute little system is the only way to charge the light. So there are no batteries to replace if it dies while your on your way home. In the dark.

Another annoying thing about the Flea light was it's demo mode. The light is meant to be tested in the store. You can see how bright it is and wonder how something that small can put out that much light. Accept that I could never tell when it was in Demo mode and when it wasn't, unless I was riding. In demo mode, the light turns off after ten minutes. To get it out of demo mode, you hold the button down until the light turns off. The manual said something like twenty seconds, but it always seemed to go off after 12 or 13 seconds for me.

And then I would ride with it and halfway to work it would stop flashing. So I'd turn it on again and a few minutes later it would stop slashing. Again. This happened to me a few times; I finally figured out that it was doing this because it wasn't charged enough. Which brings me to another point.

It really didn't seem to like charging from rechargeable batteries. Most NiMH batteries are actually 1.2 volts rather than the 1.5 volts of normal alkaline batteries. So I tried using some AA and AAAs. When you are charging the Flea, the LEDs on the light flash intermittently to indicate that id t is charging. Cool. But sometimes it never seemed to FINISH charging. Which means that the battery you were using to charge it didn't have enough charge to bring the battery in the Flea to a full charge.

So I switched to D and C size batteries and things seemed to get better. If I forgot to charge it for a week, the light would die mid ride. When it did this you could turn it back on and it would run for a little while then drop to low power mode and then finally turn off. Again, no way to charge it mid-ride.

The flea used a velcro strap to mount to the handle bars. This was pretty simple and seemed to work ok, but after a few months I noticed that the sides of the strap here starting to tear. This was probably due to my repositioning the light after it was strapped down tight. But I lived with it, up until a few weeks ago when I lost the light.

I hadn't mounted it to the handle bars as I was making a couple of stops on my way home one afternoon. So I left the light in the bottle holder of my trunk bag. Somewhere along the way, it must have bounced out, cause I haven't seen it since...

So, once again I was on the lookout for a light to commute by...

Lights: Part 1

From Bike Pics

The first headlight I bought for commuting was a Serfas SL-One. It was recommended by a guy at Cycle Works. The light wasn't too bad. Not great, but good enough for around town commuting. The SL-One takes four AA batteries. Not a problem for me, as I have plenty of NiMH rechargeables. It came off and on the bike very quickly, which was good for my commute. However, it didn't seem very well made. The button that activated the light was covered with a loose bit of rubber. In fact, this rubber cover would come off if you fiddled with it just a bit.

The problem with the SL-One is that it stopped working and I think it was because of the rain. I ride rain or shine and I figured it's a bike light: It should operate rain or shine. But after a couple of months, just before Fall kicked in and the days got really short, it died.

At first, I figured the batteries were dead, so I pulled the battery cage out. That's when I noticed that some of the battery contacts had corroded.

From Bike Pics

From Bike Pics

This seemed a little odd because some of those contacts were at the back of the light furthest from the opening. I think that the water leakage came from the button. The is no corrosion on the LED end.

From Bike Pics

From Bike Pics

Needless to say, I probably won't be looking for a Serfas brand light to replace this one.