LED Flashlights - Darkness Wins

Toadmund · Mar 13, 2013

I have about 15 LED flashlights and every one of them the power button no longer works, so I got to tap them on my hand to brighten them from dimming or to go on from off.
What the heck!
How many of these wind up in the garbage everyday, because of a power button?

Anyway, that's my big rant of the day, now on to other things bigger and better to rant about.

Allen_Wrench · Mar 13, 2013

I had an LED bike headlight once. It used a 9-volt battery and a big "superbright" LED bulb. It sure seemed really bright if you looked straight at it, but in my opinion it totally SUCKED for lighting up the road in front of me. And for some reason I had to bang on the housing to make it work also. Not much fun while I'm riding.

So, because I wanted to, I built my own headlight housing. And I used a 6v INCANDESCENT bulb, rather than another LED. I don't know about other people's luck with the LEDs, but I've used my light and I haven't run down the four C-cells yet. And it lights up the road real nice. That, and it doesn't give off a soft, spooky blue glow that looks weird with a vintage bike. Just my two cents.

Toadmund · Mar 14, 2013

Last time I installed LED 's on my bike I got two bike mount flashlights from the dollar store, I put on the clips, attached the flashlights and I thought it looked cool.
When I got home there they were, GONE!

They fell off their mounts somewhere on the way home.

Another dollar store lesson learned. No big loss.

Anyway, it is the switches that go bad, shouldn't be to hard to fix

(Isn't this thread wonderful!)

2door · Mar 14, 2013

I've never had much luck with most of the new style, LED flashlights and I've never been impressed with the amount or quality of light they give. Even those high dollar Maglite things always seemed to fail just when I needed them the most. The twist switch always failed on those I had.

Incandescent lamps give a great light, to see and be seen but the bigger ones, 35 to 55 watt, can eat up the power from a small battery pretty quick. I like a 12v SLA battery with an amp hour rating of at least 7 and preferably 10ah. I get a solid 2 hours of bright light, more motorcycle quality illumination from a 35 watt lamp and a 10ah battery.

Yes, the LEDs are blindingly bright if you look into them but they just don't hack it on a dark street. None that I've seen anyway.

Tom

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LED Flashlights - Darkness Wins

Toadmund

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Allen_Wrench

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