New bike light

[knife-man]

I posted this over on BB and I figured that you lot might like it as well.

A while ago I saw the potential of the Tesco LED torches and last week due to being stuck having to ride home along unlit towpaths and through some woodland without light's (bad planning) I tied one to my handlebars with a bootlace.:rolleyes:

Necessity being the mother of all invention and all that .

With my shoulder being out of heavy engineering duties Ive been hankering for a smaller project and this seemed perfect, finally I have a light I can be proud of.

Pretty simple really .. I chopped it off and turned the end down to a press fit , you could thread it but I cant do that on my lathe (and I shouldn't ever need to take it off again , good electrical contact is what matter's here). Solder two wires to the battery contact points .. drill a couple of holes , tap one for a fixing point and feed the wires through the other. ... make a right angle fixture from some old greenhouse and attach it to the bar mount which came from some other lights. Give it a coat of paint and attach some batteries.




PROPER JOB !!! (I'm watching scrapheap:D )

I'm using the existing switch but I suppose it would be pretty simple to knock up up a dimmer switch of some sort should you feel the need.

and some beam shots with the one I made and a completely un-modded one which Ive just elastic banded to my bars for the time being

First just the modded one.

And both , which is what the final set up should look like.


I really need to do some proper testing now ... unfortunately I can't think of anywhere round here where I wouldn't be disturbing people in their car's

:lol:

Enjoy

[nuphoria]

Excellent... get out there and show the four wheelers you mean business! 

[DaveK]

What a cracking job. Nice one knife-man 

[Mike, Lord of the Spammers!]

Welcome back Knife-man

Top mod mate , and if you burn the retinas out of a few muppety tin top pilot's, all the better

[Benner]

Top work mate. 

[J-sews]

Wow!

Best not leave those on too long or you'll catch that girl's pants on fire!

[knife-man]

Just need to go out and get some battery holder's so I can run it on D cell's, Not that there is any need .. Ive just had it on for 3 hours without a drop in brightness on 4x rechargeable AA's.

But Ive got load's of D cell's for some reason and this seems like a good way of using them up and getting ridiculous run time  . 

Hopefully I can get the other torch tomorrow as well.

[Mike, Lord of the Spammers!]

Keep us updated mate

[Gareth]

Proper job! 

[knife-man]

and she is done,

Very versatile .. it can run off 2xAA , 4xAA , 2xD or 4xD ATM but for a investment of about a whopping £3 it will run off AAA and C cell's as well but I didn't see the point as I don't have many of these.

First the lights



Now the complete unit (didn't have any black velcro  )


And of course the beam shots

My "control" honestly this is a picture of my front room with the curtains drawn and everything turned off.


Now with the beasty turned on
(Spot the difference from the earlier shots  )

and from the frount


Should I ever use It on the road I cant see me getting the usual "I didn't see him" in fact If I end up using it on the road I may have to look into a dimmer  .

Thanks for all the comment's so far , If you have any questions just fire away

[Neil]

Nice job.  Are they the 3W or 4W Tesco torches?

Neil

[knife-man]

Nice job.  Are they the 3W or 4W Tesco torches?

Neil

The 3W ones ... just simply because that is what I had and I knew the insides would work and I didn't fancy the size of the 4W ones.

Oh and I forgot to mention in those beam shot's it's running off rechargeable's at 2.4 V .. it get's brighter when using alkaline batteries for a full 3V.

[J-sews]

.....(Spot the difference from the earlier shots  )....

No girl with funny pink pants?




Nice project knife-man! Bet you can't wait to get it out on the road for some real world testing.

[knife-man]

.....(Spot the difference from the earlier shots  )....

No girl with funny pink pants?




Nice project knife-man! Bet you can't wait to get it out on the road for some real world testing.

Close enough the funny pink trouser's are actually the sofa if you look carefully you will see a tape measure resting on top and her bum isnt THAT big  . , it's a new sofa bed (for when she find's out I bought yet another torch and I end up sleeping downstairs  )

Yeah I cant wait to get out and test it ... unfortunately I seem to have made it at the time of year when the day's are long and bright and I probably wont have a real reason to use it for a while yet. Although I'm pretty sure I can invent a reason sometime soon

[J-sews]

Hehe, you'd better be more careful lining up your photographs k-m. If she sees that one you will be sleeping downstairs for a MONTH! 



Say, off topic and all, but have you done anymore knife blades lately with the fancy file work?

[J-sews]

Ahh, here's the photo of your previous work I was looking for:

[J-sews]

Say, off topic and all, but have you done anymore knife blades lately with the fancy file work?

Pic of knife-man's re-blade job on a Leatherman Wave:

[knife-man]

I re-made the main blade as It got used a bit and dinged a few times ... but I left the filework off that one.


I may be making a sideclip blade a some point in the near future though  .