Tourist in MSN

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I would find it hard to justify buying a complete new wheel or buying a hub plus spokes plus wheel build fee, plus the cost of a headlamp if I wanted to upgrade a bike that already had a perfectly serviceable front wheel. That is the cost that most bicyclists would face to upgrade a bike to dynohub lighting.

Exception would be some commuters would find that cost well worth it if they ride a lot in the dark, or ride enough in the dark that they forgot to charge or buy batteries a few too many times.

I build my own wheels, so no wheel build fee. And in my case, the additional cost for the wheel is only buying a dynohub minus the cost of a regular hub when I build up a new wheel for a new bike. I built up two touring bikes without dynohubs in 2004 and 2010. I did not see dyno powered lighting to be worth the cost for a touring bike.

But by 2013 I owned some electronics that were charged by USB so in that year when I built up another touring bike I put a dynohub on it, and same when I built up another bike in 2017. The ability to charge batteries on a bike tour while rolling made the cost worth while.

For both of you that often ride all night long for consecutive nights on longer brevets, I can't imagine why anyone would not pay the price for reliable lighting. But you are clearly the exception.

My last bike tour, my bike was an S&S coupled bike so I have to nearly disassemble and reassemble the bike at the start and end of the tour if I flew somewhere, dyno powered lighting is one more thing that has to be installed and removed, twice. And when bike touring, I almost never used the headlight because I ride in daytime. I often use a flashing taillight when touring, so I use battery taillights when touring. For those reasons on my last tour, I did not even set up my bike for dyno powered lighting, I only used the hub for USB power with a Sinewave Revolution. I did bring a $5 headlight that I could strap onto the handlebars, that light had no battery but could be plugged into my USB powerbank if I needed a headlight for a tunnel or if I wanted to ride at night, but I never used the light for the five week long tour.

My only point is that everybody has different needs for cycling and I can clearly see why dynohub bikes are the exception and not the rule. For riding around home, since I have dynohubs, I did invest in the lights and use the dyno powered lights.

And I got lucky a couple years ago, a local bike charity had too many wheels in storage, I got three nearly new dynohub wheels for clearance prices. If it was not for those cheaper wheels, I would still only have the two dynohub wheels that I built up new, one 26 inch and one 700c.