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| Luxor 'Le Martelé' lamp set. Photo from jp weigle. |
I'm a
huge fan of the
Luxor 65 series of bicycle lamps, especially the hammered aluminium 'Le Martelé'. It took me a while, but after a few months on French Ebay I managed to
acquire a set. Naturally, I want to upgrade them with modern power LEDs, as I've done with the
classic Sturmey Archer lamp set. Both front and rear lamps use a nicely designed lamp holder that snaps into the reflector/lens base with a pair of spring clips:
For the rear lamp I can use a
screw base bulb with a super bright red
Cree XP-E LED. For the front lamp, I wasn't satisfied with the way my LED bulb sat in the reflector, so designed a heat sink that could be clamped into the opening of the reflector with set screws:
Here it is machined in copper:
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| Heat sink for Luxor 65 LED upgrade |
and with a Cree XM-L LED mounted directly to the nub that pokes through a slot milled in the PCB:
The holes for the set screws weren't quite in the right place to grab the base of the reflector so I had to drill and tap new ones for a 4-40 set screw. Here's how the LED/heat sink assembly clamps onto the base of the reflector:
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| Original set screw hole was in the wrong spot! |
Here's how the original bulb holder fits:
Notice the double dip in the middle of the edge of the reflector base. I failed to notice this when placing the holes for the set screws!
The final result:
The light is bright and very floody, much like my
LED upgrade to the Sturmey Archer headlight. The beam does not produce a concentrated hot spot, which makes me wonder if this is a limitation of using LEDs with 100-140º viewing angles in reflectors designed for incandescent bulbs with >180º spreads. Some lux data will be required to sort this out.
Here's the matching Le Martelé rear lamp with a
LED bulb replacement:
6 comments:
I noticed Compass Cycles is stocking replacement tail light LED bulbs that incorporate a standlight. I don't expect them to be as bright as what you've done here but the standlight functionality and the low price sound appealing.
http://www.compasscycle.com/Lighting.html
I did indeed notice those lights. They are a technical and engineering marvel. I remember finding them on some obscure Euro cycling site a couple of years ago and the prospect of them making their way to North America seemed slim at the time. It would be nice to know the technical specifications so their performance could be compared to the ones I've made. As you say, I don't think they would be as bright as power LEDs mounted on copper. I can't imagine they would run at much more than 100 mA, which is enough current to make a red LED quite bright. Regardless, combining a LED and standlight into a E10 bulb is very elegant.
Look: I live in Europe and badly want some of those LED bulbs. Finding it silly having them sent twice across the Atlantic, doubling the cost I guess, I wander if you could provide me the producer's name, eventually lead me towards the "obscure Euro cycling site" you mention? Would be much appreciated - along with your site in general:)
These globes are quite good the output is rated at .25 watts standlight is a bit dim but lasts for around 5 minutes
A great plug and play upgrade although i still use my blinky battery radbot as well.
The co. that makes the led globe appears to have gone out of business (www.bikelight.ch) you can still get them from Compass cycles.
reflectalite has some led globes available w/o standlicht function
http://www.reflectalite.com/LEDpage.html.
the output is .35 watts not .25 it is brigher than the incandescent globe
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