Upgrading halogen bike lights

Hi, I have just purchased a new magicshine light for use at an upcoming 24hr event, which leaves me with an old smart twin halogen headlamp setup (http://www.sbrsports.com/img/A/472424.jpg) in the garage. I realise there may be some heat dissipation issues, but is there any way of upgrading this system with LEDs? I don't want them to compete with any newer setups in terms of lumens, but a boost on top of what they currently provide from the 5w and 10w halogen bulbs would hopefully give me a nice backup light?

If I'm being silly a helpful slap wouldn't go amiss.

Cheers

Jaime

I just upgraded a 10 watt cygo (sp) light to where it puts out about 10X the lumens. It was cheap and its much better usable light than any led or most HID's (an HID might have higher lumens but it's that warmer tint of halogens that helps your eyes see obstacles they need to see.)

I simply replacd the 10 watt, 6 volt MR11 bulb with a 12 volt, 35 watt MR 11 glassed spot. Instead of using the original 7.2 volt, 2.5 amp hour lead acid battery I'm using (from my Makita Drill) a 3.0 amp hour, 18 volt lithium ion battery. I was amazed at how much visibly brighter the 35 watt bulb is with the 18 volt battery than the intended 12 volt. In fact I found a 12 volt 20 watt bulb w/an 18 volt battery is brighter than a 50 watt bulb with the correct 12 volt battery. Charts I've found here indicated uping the voltage 50% ups the lumens 313%.

Now for about $5.00 here's what I got:
- a light about 10X brighter than normal; beats any LED bike light out there for power.
- I know the bulb will not last that long - 18 volts burns it out faster. I've used it about 5 hours now and I'm still on the original but I carry spares with me.
- The housing is not made for the kind of heat I'm putting it thru. I rode up to Nederland (8,300' above sea level) from Boulder the other night (yes all at night). It was about 40 deg F out and I probably averaged about 10 mph on the way up and 30 mph on the way back. At 10 mph I shut the light off every few minutes for a few minutes. At 30 mph I can leave it on for 25 minutes but it still felt really hot after that amount of time - and smelled slightly of burnt plastic.

I'm thinking of switching to a 20 watt bulb which would make it the strength of a normal car headlight and probably last longer. (I've got the everything was so cheap I don't care if I break something in my experiment attitude!) Idealy I'd have a smaller light for climbing (you don't need that many lumens for climbing) and then use the high power light for fast downhills.

Cheers for that - how did you mod the battery from the drill to fit into the lighting circuit?

Jaime

I used the flashlight that came with my Ryobi One + setup. Cut the top off, wired it, JB weld.





Prior to that, I used a 16x AA pack:naughty:



No matter what you do with a halogen system, your runtime will suffer. I can build a light that is as bright as the over-volted Halogen, same runtime, 1/3 the size of the battery. They're just soooo inefficient.

There's no way I can get more than an hour on my halogen system...probably closer to 45-50min. and that's on the fat battery. The slim one pictured is much, much less. Now mine sits in my shop and spot's my work area.

I thougth about that with my makita - it really has an akward to reach terminals on the battery.

No access to a picture at the moment, (by the way this only applies to Makita's LXT series batteries) but I took 2 generic extension cord ends (the kind that you buy to replace a broken plug in a hardware store). Mine happened to have an orange casing around a yellow, hard plastic center that could push out. I glued 2 together after removing the inner prongs and grounds of each. It slides in really tight now and a velcro piece goes over it as well. The whole battery contraption is "ghetto" to the max but it is very secure, changes in seconds and slides very tightly into a waterbottle cage.

With the 35 watt bulb its about 2 thousand lumens (rough guestimate - it's much brighter than 1 of my car headlights on high but not as bright as 2), and lasts about 45 minutes. As I mentioned earlier though, I would never leave it on for 45 minutes straight without moving really fast in cold, ambient temps. I do have 3 batteries total and each one only weighs about 1 1/4 lbs ... I do think Makita has the lightest per watt hour battery though Dewalts Li Nano batteries (significantly heavier per watt hour) are better.

Sandwich Shoppe has a Makita lxt battery dock for 12$. I wouldn't overvolt so much unless you plan on carrying spare bulbs along for the phuut phactor. Halogens are a bit more efficient overvolted but at the exspense of bulb life. I have modded three old halogens to LEDs and they are much better. Runtime, brightness, beam pattern(I prefer a large smooth spot to a hotspot with spill), and durability(I did an endo landing on my head, broke the helmet mount but the LEDs were still on dangling by the power cord). Try that with any filament light. Cutter has very nice triple and quad lenses(I prefer these to mce or p7 lights) for Cree xres or xpg LEDs and George at Taskled makes excellent drivers. There's lots of stuff out there for mr11 and mr16 bulb sizes to choose from just let your imagination go and keep reading up.