Originally Posted by
drpaddle
For a recent tour, I used a Miller front light and a Union tail light, both with LED bulb upgrades. They looked appropriate on the 1970 Mondia. I powered them with a Shimano dynohub. I built 650b wheels anyway, so installing the hub was no extra effort. Were I to do this again, I would install a capacitor circuit to smooth out the flashing at low speed caused by AC power going to diode bulbs. The Union tail light was not adequately secured, and the bracket fatigued and broke while banging along a gnarly singletrack in Idaho.
As to bottle generators, I had too many rattle loose BITD to ever trust them. While I never crashed from that, I saw some nasty wrecked bikes with collapsed forks or stays come into the shop I worked at.
That's a great looking set up!
Are you satisfied with the light you are getting? It seems to me that how well an LED bulb works in a vintage housing would depend on the particular housing/reflector/lens and the bulb chosen. I suspect that any way you go is going to beat out a vintage light bulb pretty easily.
Vintage lights were mostly terrible. The point was primarily to be seen. The light was just enough to be able to avoid large potholes, black cats, or going over a cliff.