Help, dynamo lights

Garth

I bought my new bike on Tues and for the life of me I can't figure out how these Dynamo lights work. I rang the cycle shop, they said to loosen the bolt to see would it make contact with the tire but it doesn't seem to?

Am I missing something completely?

The mechanism is a small black plastic thing with a wheel on it, you can see where it should make contact but it simply seems too far away from the tire?

Does anyone have any ideas? It'll be Monday before I can get to the shop again and I'm working lates for the rest of the week so I'll have to leave my bike at home :-(

I've never had dynamo lights before so it's possible I'm just being thick...

ashj

usually there's a wee button on them to spring it back toward the wheel (ie. the "on" setting)

I don't have on myself so I can't elaborate... but that should do it!

Morgan

I assume it's a standard "bottle" dynamo. You press it downwards and it will click in against the wheel. Pull it away from the wheel to disengage.

e.g. in this picture you would press down just above the writing on the dynamo.

Civilian_Target

Eurgh, I really don't like those type of dynamos. How efficient are they compared to hub ones?

Titiritero

The one in the picture is not particularly efficient (small rotating wheel, increasing dragging), but the newer ones are very efficient, and still only about 5% the cost of a dynamo hub.

I got all my lighting gear in Germany (AXA dynamo, front and rear B&M lights, the back one an LED with standlight functionality -keeps lighting when stopped-) and I´m extremmely happy with it.

Unfortunately I couldn´t find any dynamo stuff in the shops in Dublin. In some shops they even tried to discourage me, saying they were "old fashioned" and much heavier than battery lights. Maybe I cycle more for environmental reasons than for racing, so I don´t care about weight, but I do care about piling up used batteries, plus the long run costs of replacing them. Oh, and not forgetting you save the hassle of carrying your lights with you every time you lock your bike on the street...

Garth

Hm. Reading the posts here it appears it works exactly the way I think it should, only mine just doesn't.

The guys in the shop are really down on dynamos too, but I really like the idea... and I'm crap at remembering things like batteries so they're good for me!

I guess I'll be back to the cycle shop on Monday :-(

I wanted to work my way up to cycling during peak times by cycling on my late shifts so I'd miss the traffic at first, but to do that I need the lights. Grrr

John_C

They can sometimes just be very stiff. Hop on your bike and once you're going, give a good kick down onto it, aside from that, I can't help.

I have a set of these which are quite handy.

http://www.goodbyebatteries.com/home/home.php?ref=trade