high voltage LEDs

Now imaging what a 100mA LED does. I've got one on my mountain bike now, leaving it on during the day. Instead of vehicles coming in from side roads cutting me off their drivers slam the brakes and almost salute.

ha ha. You can try also 3w leds - can do 500-1000 ma. I believe flashing red/blue lights are illegal, but a flashing yellow OK - HF has a an electronic loud hailer - a squawk on that would make them salute.

My head torch has a Cree XM-L T6 LED that runs at 2 amps (below its max rated power) putting out 800lm. On our night hikes in rough bush country, I run it at mid power, about 400mA I think. Don't want to start any grass fires :). It's incredibly bright, with a nice machined aluminium focussable lens, and only $16 delivered from China (payment escrowed by aliexpress). Good quality (panasonic) Li-ion 26550 cells cost that much each (cheapies are ~$5, but only 2000mAH not the claimed

There are nice ones for bicycles but the cooling fins present too much of a hazard for nasty cuts during a crash:

Some day I might go to this kind:

But so far the mount appears too flimsy, the battery packs only come with Velcro which won't survive my style of riding, and there are no bright rear lights I can directly connect. No idea why nobody seems to see that market.

No cooling fins on my head-torch. The same store has bike lights too.

Can't you mount the lamp under the head-stem so it's out of the way?

Clifford Heath

With a 12W lamp that begs the question how it will survive a 1h plus ride in 110F under the glistening sun. I like to ride with the lights on during the day while on roads. On trails I leave one light in blinking mode so rescuers can find me should I royally screw up in the wilderness.

Not really. There's lots of hydraulic brake lines and shifter cables that would get tangled up in there during really wild rides. They would also be in the light beam.

But the main problem with bicycle lights is the plastic. Almost anything plastic on a mountain bike will break. It's not really a question of if but when. The same goes for innards. If you take a light, slam it into the palm of one of your hands and hear any ever so faint rattling it is almost guaranteed not to survive on trails.