finally got my new lights

[jags]

Well got my long awaited lights i ordered from amazon 3 weeks ago,
can't afford the  son or shimano wheel build just yet (well i could if i could find the wife's credit card) so settled for a cateye HL-EL540 headlight and a new rear cateye light ,seem pretty good so if it ever stops raining I'll  test them out tonight  (i do like the odd night time spin so different)
just charging up the batteries as we speak very nifty  basically plug in the whole unit job done .

[Danneaux]

Fantastic news, jags; so very pleased for you!

From what I can see, it should be a corker in use. Here...take a look at a photo of the on-road beam taken off the CatEye website:



They have a complete description of the HL-EL540 here: http://www.cateye.com/en/products/detail/HL-EL540/

I feel a bit better knowing you have good lighting for the darkening days; a good reminder for all of us who tend to be out after dark. It helps to be seen, of course, but it is also essential to see what's out there -- small animals, trash and litter in the bike lane, and the thing that has caught me out once or twice:  Water-filled potholes that are *much* deeper than they appear. Still looking for my fillings from the last one of those I hit in the early Spring. Looked like a gentle little puddle, but the water hid ragged edges and a 5cm drop.

Can't wait to hear the ride reports from you, jags. Hopefully, they'll be every bit as good as the demo pic above. There's encouraging news in a favorable review here: http://www.amazon.com/Cateye-HL-EL540-Econom-Force-Headlight/product-reviews/B008ASKXHO/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

All the best,

Dan.

[jags]

thanks for that Dan if it's as good as that i'm a happy camper
it's been raining here all day  but if it stops i have a nice 10 mile route planned to test them.
pity i cant post pic's 
btw i have them on the sherpa,my son in law made me a bracket to fit on the bottle dynmo braze on's front fork ,so i have two light's mounted on there ,one pointed just in front of the wheel  and the new one for lighting up the road. two tail lights .

[Andre Jute]

What's the "new Cateye taillight", Jags? I too am partial to a bit of night riding, but I go in the couple of hours before dawn to avoid the drink-drivers. -- Andre Jute

[jags]

Andre it's excellent model is TL-LD1100 2 rows of lights and side lights as well very clever,  does all kind of crazy stuff you could be at a disco  but seriously very bright according to the box it can stay flashing constant for 100 hours i suppose you can take that with a pinch of salt 
 but yeah excellent light chainreaction has then  i think around 26 euro battery's included.

[Andre Jute]

Andre it's excellent model is TL-LD1100 2 rows of lights and side lights as well very clever,  does all kind of crazy stuff you could be at a disco  but seriously very bright according to the box it can stay flashing constant for 100 hours i suppose you can take that with a pinch of salt 
 but yeah excellent light chainreaction has then  i think around 26 euro battery's included.

That's a first class lamp, widely thought to be the best battery lamp in the world!

You don't need to take the battery life claim with any salt: they last a very long time in either mode. I used mine on flash all the time, day and night, whenever the bike ran, and changed batteries so infrequently that I stopped keeping track. I used mine as an additional warning light to a dynamo-driven steady light. I still do at night.

However, I was pretty brassed off to have to buy a new one because the cap fell off and was lost on the road, ruining the lamp. I suggest you run a tie wrap around it lengthwise, between the knobbly bits on the ends, and tighten it up right smartly. It has to be a narrow tiewrap not to catch the two rubber selection/on/off buttons. I also fixed that tie wrap with two more around the barrel of the thing, between the knobbly bits  for location, and these two tiewraps also do service to fix the TL-LD1100 to my rack, because the rack bracket was already in use for the dynamo lamp.  Just as well the thing has superb battery life or cutting the tiewraps to fit new batteries (you have to get the whole thing off and extract the batteries with pliers becasue they fit so tight on their little plastic slides) could get old pretty soon.

Looking forward to hearing how you like your lamps when you've given them a whirl.

Andre Jute

[jags]

cheers Andre yeah well pleased with it ,and i noticed that he cap was a wee bit dodgy but i haden't properly tightened it all the way home, but yeah i think the zip ties will be fitted
 today.
Andre not sure if you good weather in west cork last night but up here it rained all bloody night so night ride to test out the new toy  actually it's still  raining

[Andre Jute]

cot sure if you good weather in west cork last night but up here it rained all bloody night so night ride to test out the new toy  actually it's still  raining

What else. I was just peeping out of the front door (hope burns eternal!) but it is as wet out the front as the back.

[jags]

  same here Andre lashing it down.
btw i tried to get a zip tie on the rear light no luck ,but what i done i sliced a 6inch strip of  black insulating tape about  eight of an inch wide  and very carefully wrapped it around that cap, it works great and can't really see the tape unless you look very hard.

[Andre Jute]

same here Andre lashing it down.
btw i tried to get a zip tie on the rear light no luck ,but what i done i sliced a 6inch strip of  black insulating tape about  eight of an inch wide  and very carefully wrapped it around that cap, it works great and can't really see the tape unless you look very hard.

Insulting tape is one solution, but it will leave a nasty mess behind.

I know the lengthwise zip tie wants to slip off. But I don't put it around the top and the bottom of the lamp, but around the front and the back, where there's a minimum of location for the zip tie between the bumps. Then I tie the lamp to the rack with two more zip ties, applied veritcally between the bumps, which cross the first horizontal ziptie, and hold it tightly in place. I don't use the Cateye clips at all, as I don't remove any lights when I stop, but tie everything onto the bike. That idea of a lamp on a slider clip is thoughtless when the batteries will last 100 hours on the shortest mode and 200 on the flashing mode I use all the time. Those clips are for lights you take off and refit all the time, which doesn't include the TL-LD1100.

Andre Jute

[jags]

Andre if you get a chance will you post a pic of your rear light.
also question for you and Dan  looking at the post Dan put up on the light pattern of the cateye headlight ,how much better is the son dynamo and headlight compaired to that cateye light.
i didn't get a chance to test my new light on the dark country roadt with all this rain but i have to say the new light is most certainly a nice bit of kit.

[Andre Jute]

There you go, Jags. With apologies for not having time to clean a hard-used bike. (I mean, we all know Dan has two of each bike, one for use, one standing perfectly polished under a dust sheet ready to be photographed!) Of interest to those who pore over photographs. From the top: My leather saddlebag, the white-stitched brown leather item. Cateye TL-LD1100 rear lamp semi-perminently fixed to rack with tiewraps. Tubus Cosmos stainless steel rack. BUMM Toplight Line Plus dynamo rear light. SKS P65 mudguard, just barely big enough to cover 60mm Big Apples. The hole is for a previous rack, by SL, which had a fitting to stabilise the mudguard further. On the left, low down, my leather toolbag, actually a small lady's change purse, also brown leather to match the saddle and saddle bag; it holds enough tools to strip the bike, excluding the bottom bracket, and disassemble all the components, fix a flat, make more mundane adjustments. On the right one of my fave Basil Cardiff pannier baskets, very versatile in low-crime areas, can just be seen. Also on the right, three instances of the velcro strips that I wrap around the expensive rack to stop the basket abrading it, and to stop it wrecking the basket. Interestingly the lights aren't on, just reflecting the flash; you don't get anything except red glare if you try to photograph these lights in operation without proper filters. The Line Plus has no flash mode (bloody stupid German legislators!) so is used on steady day and night, driven off my 36V electric motor battery via the Fly E which feeds it the correct voltage, on whenever the bike systems are switched on with the master switch; it consumes minuscule power; the Cateye is used on flash day and night when I remember, but it is no longer as necessary as it once was, because the Line Plus is really very bright even in daylight. On busy roads I would still switch on the Cateye, but I try to avoid busy roads because I cycle for pleasure, not business. About your other question, Jags, that seems like a pretty good throw, certainly better than the last of the dynamo headlights I had until only a few years ago, maybe as good as some MR16 15W halogen lights I made inside little tomato puree tins (total cost under 5 and I ate the sauce on spaghetti!) and drove with 12V electric drill batteries, which I though was just the bees' knees and with which I made some amazing journeys. The problem with battery front lights is the awful choice between power consumption/distance/time and battery weight. An Electron setup I had gave either 5W or 15W from MR11 but was a misery on either because 5W wouldn't let you get up any speed on the country lanes and 15W would consume the batteries in 55 minutes, and growing ever less, whereas all my rides are at least 75m.... Andre Jute

[jags]

Thanks Andre looks pretty solid that light ain't going anywhere.

[Danneaux]

(I mean, we all know Dan has two of each bike, one for use, one standing perfectly polished under a dust sheet ready to be photographed!)

I...have an air compressor, and am not afraid to use it! Does wonders to blow off gravel dust before a quick post-ride wipedown.

The hole is for a previous rack, by SL, which had a fitting to stabilise the mudguard further.

Now, Andre...that hole needs filling. Annnnnd, what better to fill it with than a "proper" light-mount mudguard bracket. If you take a look at my attached photo below, you'll see a fine example in stainless, offered by Tubus for just that purpose. It fits to the 50mm light mounts on Tubus racks (and tucks *very* nicely behind a Toplight Line Plus on same) and extends downward to the mudguard. It is adjustable vertically, but if it fails to reach completely, a small spacer will do the trick. Just as Tubus say, it pretty much completely eliminates all need for the rearmost mudguard stays and makes the mudguard nicely solid and rattle-free...and plugs existing holes, too!   I sometimes use nylon PCB chassis-mount plugs to undrill holes in mudguards. They are nearly invisible. I also sometimes use a varied hole punch to cut sample "donut holes" out of old mudguards to fill holes in newer ones. A dab of beta-cyanoacrylate gel works very nicely on SKS mudguards, and remains not-quite brittle, so it doesn't restrain the blade's natural flexibility.

Justasec'...Andre, I just checked, and that Tubus mudguard bracket will work with *any* taillight with 50mm mount spacing. Just bend the lower tab as needed and use a spacer as required, and you're set. It would look real nice on your Cosmo.

Jags, you asked...

question for you and Dan  looking at the post Dan put up on the light pattern of the cateye headlight ,how much better is the son dynamo and headlight compaired to that cateye light.

Boy, that's a tough one, 'cos so much of how well the beam shows in the photograph depends on the exposure and photographic technque. I suspect it won't be quite that bright in reality, and certainly not on a wet road (wet roads give miserable results for nearly any lights, as  the wet surface scatters the beam; in my experience bike lights really show to best advantage on dry, crushed granite gravel).

Even so, jags...in looking at CatEye's photo, I think your new battery light will give a very good account of itself compared to my B&M IQ Cyo R with Nearfield lighting (powered by the SON28 dynohub). I think the beam on yours is not as "square" on the pavement, perhaps, but it also seems to avoid the horrible "hot spot" B&M included as an "undocumented feature" (bug) on mine. I had so hoped for the same beam pattern as my Dutch friend had on his B&M IQ Fly back in 2008 as we rode at night through the Netherlands' very dark "Green Heart". Now, *that* was a light...it just laid down a smooth, unbroken, even white carpet of light I've not seen before or since on a dyno light. Unfortunately, Andre and I both got caught out when B&M redesigned the IQ Cyo Rs and it is that hot spot which utterly ruins the otherwise smooth pattern of light compared to past models.

Andre...are you going for the Luxos when it comes out? I'm mightily tempted, but may be a gentleman and let you go first. Purely to see if a man of some discernment finds it acceptable. I'm looking for tests, but it is still too early. It is plenty spendy, and that remote switch/USB port fills me with dread and suspicion wrt long term durbility. It just has the "look" of trouble, but I have yet to see one in person, and B&M do a fine job in mos cases, so I'm sure they will have it well-sorted in production models. I'malso a bit concerned to read they have eschewed supercaps in favor of a battery to smooth battery output and prevent fallback mode on phones and such being charged by it.

All the best,

Dan.

[Andre Jute]

Thanks for reminding me of that bracket, Dan. I seem to recollect I have one. But the Cosmos is such a tiny rack, the bracket will be inches short of the hole. I'll have to bend up a bracket, and I I don't think that's called for, as the mudguard is well supported already. I think your other idea, of a plug off an electronics board is more of a goer. Next time I'm in the loft, I'll scout around and see what I can find.

As for the Luxos light... My normal style is anyway to let the fashion victims run in and pay the full price, while I come along later when supply exceeds demand and the price has adjusted.(I'm not an economist for nothing, you know. LOL.) I have more than the price of a perfectly good Trek bicycle in BUMM lamps, and only two of them are really superior to cheaper lamps (first series Cyo near field, current Toplight Line Plus). The Fly E is a good enough light, but as a step backwards I was very disappointed in that hotspot. I don't fancy giving my money to BUMM to be ripped again. First I want to see independent photographs.

In fact, I'm thinking about losing the Fly E and going back to the first-series Cyo, which is plenty good enough, and arranging the voltage for it with a piece of electronics I had already glued to a heatsink when the Fly E appeared, as soon as I can work out how to keep it waterproof.

But work on my bike will probably have to wait until next year as I'm snowed under by life.

Andre Jute