What rear light?

[kamilb1998]

I've found myself coming home late in the past few weeks and have been informed, unsurprisingly, that the rear light on the Sinclair isn't sufficient. Can anyone recommend a relatively inexpensive but powerful rear cycle light?

[kamilb1998]

Thanks guys, will look into them when I get a chance a little later on and get one ordered.

[kamilb1998]

Watchman said:

What about replacing the bulb in the Sinclair with a modern LED? Some of the "packs" of surface mount LEDs you can get for bulb replacements in cars can be rather bright.

I have an LED bulb on the front which is brighter than normal but holding a torch out the front still helps to see where I'm going, I tried to fit an LED bulb to the rear and it seemed even dimmer than the standard fit bulb. The light on the Sinclair is quite low too so I thought of mounting a bright, flashing light to the rear mast poles.

I can of course get round this by getting a lift from the folks but this isn't always practical.

[kamilb1998]

Viperzs said:

I use a Cateye Volt 50. It actually projects a pool of red light onto the road behind you as you cycle and the beam itself is very intense, no way anyone can 'not' see you!

http://www.rutlandcycling.com/150663/products/cate...

This is a pretty good shot of what it does

It's a marketing image but I could go and get one of mine if you wanted to see it better.

That looks interesting, the Sinclair light does this too but not quite to that extent. Would be interesting to see how it looks in a non marketing image if you could get one?

[kamilb1998]

Watchman said:

On my bike I favour quantity (number) over sheer volume of light. I have 2 relatively low powered Knog Skinks set to flash at different rates which I believe is quite eye catching.

I agree that the lights on the C5 are low-down so maybe improve them as much as you can and add one (or more) "flasher" higher up as you mentioned.

I was thinking of having two lights - one on each mast pole and perhaps some reflective material on the poles too.

I used to have a reflective hi-viz mast for it but it was quite flimsy and broke with daily use quite quickly and no amount of superglue would hold it together. It protruded about another 2ft high so was round about at car windscreen height.

I've got a few pictures of the lights on it, the front is rather adequate with regards to visibilty but due to the way the beam pattern is set on the light, it doesn't tend to light the road very well.

I consider the rear to be rather visible too but I haven't seen it from a car driver's perspective so am unable to comment really but I have had people say it's not visible enough.

I had an odd situation with a car on the way home a few nights ago actually, going along a straight road, he flicked his full beam on, saw me, switched back to main beam and started slowing down, as he got closer to me he started speeding up again and proceeded to pass me with inches to spare blaring his horn at me.

[kamilb1998]

Thanks for those. Yeah, I think the light on it is adequate but I have had people claim they couldn't see it. Mother definitely thinks it isn't bright enough, but that's hardly surprising