quote=Medic Zero;20715039]I'm sick of being blinded by everyone else's miniature suns they've mounted on their bikes. I run a helmet light too to help with spotting potholes, and this is my commuter bike, where other than a couple of short sections on good paths, I've got the city's lights to help for almost all of it. In short, I'm not worried about the front light being underpowered, but definitely want to avoid an overpowered one. It's not about saving a couple of bucks on the light.[/quote]
Your call of course, but nearly all dynamo lights use a shaped beam pattern that specifically avoid shining light up into people eyes and annoying them.
Like here a pic of the IQ-X beam pattern (they've all very similar in B&M dynamo lights in order to conform to German StVO regulations):
I ran across another page for a different light that has a lot of pics describing it:
https://www.outboundlighting.com/pro...-road-edition/
Typical Light:
Light with a cutoff:
Another one:
Video talking about it:
From best to worst light patterns for oncoming traffic:
1. (best) Shaped beam with cutoff
2. "flashlight" style beam
3. (worst) Wide angle mountain bike light
You're already going with the best beam pattern for avoiding hitting any oncoming bikes/pedestrians with your light. Obviously it's your call, but given the beam pattern I don't think oncoming traffic would know the difference between any of the lights that you can attach to a dynamo, they're all already about as good as you can get.
Originally Posted by
Medic Zero
Interestingly, some of Spanniga's lights feature "Light Line Technology" which sounds similar to what the Topline does.
Yeah, sounds like the same thing. A bit annoying that they don't put the reflector and light flat together like the topline does, on the other hand they look a little better.
Originally Posted by
Medic Zero
Despite being pretty poor, I often go out of the way to spend $ at my LBS, because I'm lucky enough to have a great one, and want them to survive, but in this case I'd like to learn this skill. Also, I'm never quite happy with how even the very best shops end up doing some of the smaller things, so knowing me, I'd probably end up rewiring it just to get it looking cleaner or tidier to my mind. As it is, I've paid my LBS to build up this wheel and will for the others, so he's getting a good chunk of the action anyway.
Cool. It's generally just lining the wire up on the bike then zip tying it. I got it wrong the first time and had to cut everything off and do it again...then I switched lights and needed a little more cable that I didn't have. Was a bit annoying.
Originally Posted by
Medic Zero
I should've been clearer. I'm not anticipating actually mountain biking at night with either of these rigs, but expect that I will end up taking at least one of them on some mild singletrack at some point
I cannot figure what you're trying to say...sounds like "I'm not anticipating mountain, I'm just going to ride my bike on some mountain bike trails". So...you're going to go mountain biking? Confused.
Originally Posted by
Medic Zero
and was just wondering if there's any particular tricks to routing the wiring to keep from getting snagged by a branch or something. Like, does anyone ever wrap the fork leg where the wire is running up in bar tape or rubber?
Ah, I'm not aware of anything extra in particular. But a new bike with internal cable routing?
Originally Posted by
Medic Zero
If I ever manage to get back into shape for mountain biking, I'll probably get around to getting set up to do it in the dark, because it's dark a lot up here, but my impression is that is a whole different realm of lights other than dyno lights, and given that it's going to take at least a couple of years for me to get to that point, technology will probably have changed by that point, so I'm not worried about researching that right now..
Tech has slowed down a lot, but it's definitely a totally different topic. Lights that are very good for mountain biking are usually very obnoxious to anyone in front of you riding towards you on the road.
Originally Posted by
Medic Zero
There was an article online somewhere comparing different dyno hubs I was reading not long ago that stated that one of them (the Shutter Precision? It wasn't any of the Shimano hubs) performed better at very low speeds. Given how slow I travel when loaded down with my camping gear and climbing through hilly/mountainous terrain, it seemed like that smart move to go this route. IIRC, several of the hubs basically stopped working below the speed that I find myself traveling for decent stretches at a time.
I know my Shimano Alfine hub with a Lumotec Cyo put light out at walking speed, because the other person I was biking with got a flat and wanted to walk home, and it worked while walking.
It's hard to tell with some of those whether it's a real thing, or whether it's someone theorizing a lot of stuff that isn't really true. Sometimes people get overly caught up in hype and make big claims they don't really know anything about, it's hard to tell.