The BiB, LED lights and advice to POBC

[Oily Mick]

Quoting Roger Ford: 

In case anyone's interested, the new Caterham "race" brake lights appear to consist of these LED clusters inside these Drift instrument pods. I'm considering making a pair, but only really because I think I can do it for about half what Caterham charge.

Presumably without any labour cost

 

[michaeljclark]

When I first joined BC, there was a thread that I found (here) in Nov '09 about a fellow BC member who had made 40LED conversion boards for the std light clusters, that Johnty was very about

 

Suprised that CC or one of the other suppliers of 7 type stuff haven't taken up the challenge, as I would have thought they receive a deluge of orders, I guess the "E" marked certification is most likely the issue?

 

Mike

[Z3MCJez]

I don't object unduly to the price as while I don't mind soldering things up, it's time that I don't have at the weekend.

 

What I don't like is that it took Caterham 5 months to launch that "design". Ugly doesn't begin to say it.

 

Jez

[Andy Lef]

Just trawling through SVC and its lights and this popped up. Has anyone any experience with it - I know eugene has the round light block so they might be a good option for those with a penchant for rectangular clusters

 

Edited by - Andy Lef on 10 May 2013 13:16:31

[Roger Ford]

I understand that Caterham did get some "nice looking" lights specced up, but they came in at over £200 a set. They decided that was a bit much and went for these.

 

Caterham's price is £90 (£75+VAT). The parts come in at £46, plus postage (£5 for a pair of pods I think) plus the price of a couple of resistors, a couple grommets, some wiring and the connectors. Their price isn't unreasonable given that someone's got to trim the lugs off the light clusters, solder up the wires and resistors, drill the pods, fit the connectors, assemble everything and test them.

 

I just fancy doing the work myself and producing a bargain basement set. Though technically they wouldn't be legal under our regs, but if they're visually identical I can't see anyone complaining.

[elie boone]

This could be a alternative

 

I quite like the New Holland white and red rear lights ( horizontal division ) but i think they are more than 20cm wide, i did a search but couldn'd find any on the web.

 

Edited by - elie boone on 10 May 2013 16:53:09

[Ian B]

Quoting michaeljclark: 

When I first joined BC, there was a thread that I found (here) in Nov '09 about a fellow BC member who had made 40LED conversion boards for the std light clusters, that Johnty was very about

In practice I don't think those are as bright as the tungsten filament lamps Mike. Mick Smith has them and having followed him a lot on tours I found them disappointing in brightness.

However, LED technology has moved on a lot since then, and a high power single chip white LED 'insert' that sits in the existing light cluster (if you like upside down caravan lights 😳) would be easy enough to design. No idea how much would be involved in e-marking it though so I guess it's not worthwhile for CC to do it.

 

[Johnty Lyons]

Ian is correct although they are great at night they are not surface mount and scatter a lot of light sideways so pretty poor in sunlight.