The Bike Geek

You can’t get geeker than this… I had an old Halogen Bike like I got Performance many years ago that I kept around as my loaner set of lights. It wasn’t the best but it got the job done. A few night rides ago the battery died so I started to see what I could do to bring it back to life.

I found this “kit” which included the lens, the LED’s, a heatsink, and a driver board from a reseller in Australia. The kit is design to be a drop-in replace for common halogen MR-11 bulbs found in bike lights. It’s similar in design to the Niterider TriNewts. It’s basically three Cree LEDs with a lens to focus the beam.

It wasn’t that easy as a drop in replacement, but if you’re handy with a soldering iron and know a little about electronics it can be completed in a few hours. Basic steps, remove the old MR-11 bulb, cut the wires, wire the power leads to the driver board, then attach wires to the LEDs. Sounds simple, but the parts are so small you need a really good soldering iron and steady hands.

It’s raining or I would take some beam shots, but I will say that’s it’s almost as bright as my Niterider Enduro HID light. The beam on the HID is narrower, but I wanted this to be my handlebar light so a wide beam was actually what I wanted. My little light project turned out a lot better than I expected. The best part is that I can use any type of battery between 6 to 11 volts and get the exact same brightness do to the “boost” abilities of the driver board. The picture is of my 6 AA batteries in an old water bottle. I also have another bottle wired up that will accept 7.2 - 8.4 volt RC/AirSoft batteries. No more paying high prices for replacement bike light batteries.

I’ll post more about the light as soon as the weather gets better and I can actually do a night ride.