Retro-fitting a dynamo is straightforward, but it does require rebuilding the front wheel and the hub and light are reasonably pricey, so it’s quite an initial outlay, but it will pay for itself over the years in reduced battery consumption and the ease and convenience of generating your own light.  What follows is a brief discussion of some of the dynamos, some of the lights and what is involved in a conversion.

Hubs.

Dynamo hubs in general have improved out of sight in the last 5 years.  The good ones generate enough power to run a very bright light with very little resistance. The charge is generated by running a series of magnets past each other.  If you have a hub on it’s own and turn the axle it feels notchy.  The notches you can feel are the magnets lining up and resisting being turned away from each other.  When the wheel is actually spinning though, this notchiness disappears.  This is because at speed, as one pair of magnets is trying to stop the wheel from turning past a spot, the next set of magnets is ready to pull the wheel towards the next spot and the two forces effectively cancel one-another out.  As a result, when the hub is not connected to a light which is turned on, it has negligible drag.  It might be too much drag for someone attempting a time trial, but not enough drag for the rest of us to even notice.  Even when the lights are on, the drag is very small, and close to unnoticeable.  They are  certainly a different beast to the old bottle dynamos which make it feel like you are riding up a hill the second they are engaged.

There are a few different options for dynamo hubs.  The two brands we carry are Shimano and Schmidt.  Both brands offer a range of models, but the variations between models within a brand are much smaller than the differences between the two brands.

Shimano dyno hubs are great value, very efficient, have high quality bearings and good seals.  The three hubs we most commonly sell are the 3n80, the Alfine and the LX.  They are pretty much identical to each other, but have different spoke counts, different provisions for disc brakes and come in either black or silver.

Schmidt hubs are similar to Shimano hubs, but are basically better in every respect and more expensive.  They have cartridge bearings, amazing seals, slightly better efficiency, weigh slightly less, and are as nicely made and finished as any hub on the market.  There are a few different models, again offering different combinations of colour, spoke count and disc compatibility.  There is also a distinction between SONdelux hubs which are lighter, lower-drag hubs with narrower flange spacing and SON hubs which are heavier, more robust hubs that generate enough power to run a halogen light at any speed.   When deciding which hub to use, the halogen issue is a bit of a non-starter, since LED lights have too many advantages over halogen to consider using a halogen light.  Furthermore, if you already own a halogen light the lower-drag hub will still run a halogen light, though it won’t output at full brightness until you are at a slightly higher speed.  The real advantages of the SON hubs are the wider flanges (which make the wheel a little stronger) and the fact that the higher energy output can help if you want to use the hub to charge devices other than lights, such as phones, GPS systems and computers.

Here is a great article on the efficiency of different hubs.  It’s a bit old now, and the Shimano hubs talked about are outdated and less efficient than the ones we sell, but if you’re interested in hubs it’s worth a read.

Lights.

Bike lights have also improved out of sight in recent years, thanks mainly to recent developments in LED technology.  For dyno-powered lights this means that less power is required to produce light and so lights can be bright enough to illuminate the road without making a significant difference to how hard the bike is to pedal.  LED lights are also immune to a problem which some halogen lights suffered from years ago, where the globe could overheat and pop if the speed of the bike was too high and the dynamo overpowered the light.  Modern lights also have built-in stand lights so that once the light has been run for a while there is a built up charge that keeps the light on when the bike is stopped.

There are a huge range of LED lights and we get many different ones in to order, but here are a couple we keep in stock most of the time.

The front light we keep in stock is the Busch and Muller IQ Cyo.  It is very bright and has an intelligently shaped beam of light.  The LED casts its light back onto a reflector which sends out light which illuminates the ground in front of the wheel and ahead of the rider.  The beam is cut squarely off at the top so that the light is less likely to dazzle oncoming cars/cyclists/pedestrians and so that the light is all going somewhere useful rather than just shooting off into the sky.

The rear light we stock is the Busch and Muller Toplight.  It is designed to mount nicely on a rack or fender, but we can rig it up to mount without either if needed.  It has built-in reflectors, is nice and bright, seals well and is very reliable.  It is connected to the front light and uses its stand-light so that when you are stopped at the lights people can see you.

Indicative price.

Dyno systems are great value, but they aren’t cheap.  Building a replacement wheel with a dynohub, the original rim and good spokes comes in at around $300 and a pair of lights costs about the same.  But then battery lights with equivalent power are also expensive and they chew through batteries.

In the end the biggest practical advantage of dyno lights is their convenience – you don’t need to remeber to replace or recharge batteries.  There’s also a lot of satisfaction to be gained not just getting to your destination under your own power, but also illuminating the way there using your own legs.

For more, check out our webshop - Constructeur.com.au.

Frame Only.
You can buy the LHT as a frame only, and build it up by swapping your old parts onto it.  The LHT frame is very well-designed.  It offers good geometry for a very stable ride.  The tubes are 4130 cromoly and are strong enough and wide enough to remain stiff and stable while carrying a load, and will last years doing it.  There is plenty of room in the frame for wide tyres and fenders.  All of the braze-ons are in the right places and allow you to easily, neatly and securely attach your mudguards, racks and so on.  It has vertical dropouts, which means the wheel is easily removable with mudguards and racks and it’s easy to get the mud guard a fixed distance from the tyre all the way around.  There are even threaded bosses for mudguards that face towards the tyre, making mounting very rigid and clean.  There is even a little braze-on to carry spare spokes.

Smaller LHTs come with 26″ wheels, whereas larger ones come with 26″ or 700c wheels.  For the smaller frames the 26″ wheels make a lot of sense.  They make it possible to avoid toe overlap without compromising other features of the frame.  They also look right on smaller bikes.  The option of 26″ wheels on the larger bikes is driven by two thing: a) all things being equal the smaller wheels will be a little stronger and b) 26″ tyres are available anywhere in the world, whereas touring 700c tyres can be tricky to find in some countries.  The sacrifice is that 26″ wheels don’t roll quite as smoothly, and there aren’t quite as many options for 26″ touring tyres.

The new LHT colour is the blue seen below.  It replaced Truckerchino – the beige-y colour in the first line-up.  In some sizes both colours are still available, but for the most part blue is the colour you can get these days.

Stock LHT.
You can buy the LHT as a complete bike, out of the box.  The stock LHT is already a great bike.  At a bit under $2000 there’s nothing on it that cries out for replacement and it’s incredible value for money.  One of its strengths is the very good wheel set it comes with.  The wheels have DT  spokes, XT hubs and Alex Adventurer rims.  The XT hubs are very well sealed, roll nicely and with occasional servicing will last for years and years.  The rims are wide enough to take comfortable tyres but not so wide that you can’t run a narrower tyre.  The spokes are a sign of the quality of what you get out-of-the-box.  This is where bikes built to a price-point often save money, since spokes aren’t glamorous.  But spokes are very important for the reliability of a bike, and good quality spokes like DT will last much longer than cheaper unbranded spokes.  Likewise, the bottom bracket, which you can barely see, is a good quality Shimano square taper cartridge unit.  This is another standard place for companies to take a short-cut, but it becomes one of the most annoying parts when it fails.  The Shimano bottom bracket is good quality, and will last for years.

The LHT has a triple crankset with 48-36-26 chainrings and a wide range 9 speed cassette.  This gearing is sufficient for most non-racing riders.  The high gear is high enough to go fast, and unless you’re doing extreme self-sufficient touring the low gear will get up any hill.  The gears are shifted using bar end shifters (aka barcons).  They are very robust and allow you to shift without removing your hands from the bars.  They also have a non-indexed mode that is useful if you damage your derailleur somewhere remote.  The derailleur itself is an XT shadow derailleur which is high-quality, robust, and well-positioned to avoid getting knocked. The Tektro brake levers are very nice with a wide flat area on the hoods which most people find comfortable.  They have a built-in quick release to make wheel removal easier.  The Tektro cantilever brakes work well and offer a lot of clearance for mudguards and racks.

It doesn’t come with pedals, which makes sense.  There are too many different incompatible pedals out there and most people considering an LHT will already have a preference.  We often fit single-sided SPD pedals so that on a long ride you can clip in, but if you’re just going to the local shops you needn’t change shoes.

A Few Mods.
We often make a few mods to the out-of-the-box LHT.  First there’s all the matters of personal preference.  A lot of people have strong preferences for certain saddles and bars.  Swapping bars and saddles makes a big difference to how a bike feels and is a good way to make a new bike feel like it’s yours.  Some people swap a Brooks saddle and a Nitto Noodle onto a LHT.  Others swap on ergo bars and a San Marco Rolls.  You might want butterfly bars and a gel saddle.  This comes down to what you find comfortable, and what will help you enjoy spending more time on your bike.

One of the next most common mods is a new pair of tyres.  Vittoria Randonneurs are one of our go-to tyres, and give a good balance of longevity, puncture resistance, efficiency and comfort.  We’ve also used Marathon Duremes on LHTs for a similar but slightly different balance of the same factors.  There are a huge number of other options, and changes here will make a big difference to how the bike feels on the road.  Changes in tyre size also allow you to find a balance between comfort and speed that suits you, and the frame has lots of room for large tyres which help you to play with this variable.

Fitting mudguards is a good way to make the LHT more versatile.  As mentioned above, the braze-ons on the LHT are all well-suited to this, and the frame offers excellent clearances.  There are also a few different choices of fenders that will personalise the bike.  Velo Orange hammered aluminium fenders give the bike a very different look to the Cascadia polycarbonate fenders.  Likewise, racks improve the versatility of the bike, and there are a whole slew of options.  You can have low rider pannier racks on the front, or a huge Surly Nice Rack, or a tiny Nitto M12 rack for a small bag.  We often put Topeak Super Tourists on the back, but there plenty of other options, including Tubus.  How you set up your racks will determine how the bike handles when loaded and should be based on the loads you typically carry.

We also fit a lot of kickstands to LHTs.  If you have panniers and need to get something out of one of them during a ride they make the job much easier.  The nicest kickstand we do (and probably the nicest there is) is the Pletscher bipod stand.  The issue of kickstands displays one of the only shortcomings of the LHT frames – they don’t have a kickstand mount.  Although this is slightly inconvenient, we can work around it and make sure that it’s our problem, not yours.

Another popular upgrade, but a more involved one, is to install dynamo lights.  This means rebuilding the front wheel with a Shimano or Schmidt hub and choosing lights.  Our favourite hubs are the Shimano 3n80 (or LX if you’ve got 36 holes), the Schmidt SON28 or the SON20R depending on the budget and application.  For lights, the Busch and Mueller IQ Cyo Plus and Flatlight Plus are the pick of the bunch value wise. A Schmidt Edelux or Supernova E3 Pro are both spectacular lights if the budget permits, or you’re after maximum light output.

It’s a hefty initial outlay, but it means no more batteries, seriously bright lights, and not having to remember to bring lights since they attach permanently.  We like to spend a bit of time finding a good way to attach the lights to give you a good beam pattern, keep the light protected, and allow a nice clean way to run the cable from the hub.  Sometimes it’s best to put the cable under the fenders, sometimes rack stays are useful, often brake lines are useful, but if you get us to do it, then we’ll nut out the best way.

Full custom
Fully custom LHTs are some of the most satisfying builds all round.  Starting from the frame only, or heavily modifying the stock bike we can build it up to suit  particular rider.  We really enjoy working out unique specs with the customer, and at the end of the process they walk away with a bike that’s exactly how they want it to be.  We’ve done quite a few already.  Because the LHT frame is so sensibly spec’d there is a lot of scope for different builds.  It’s part of the Surly design philosophy to make the bikes as versatile as possible.  One example of this versatility is the choice of shifter bosses.  Most people will use bar end shifters or brifters on their LHTs, which require cable stops on the frame.  Surly have spec’d shifter bosses with removable cable stops so that the 1% of customers who like down tube shifters will be able to use them.  This thinking on Surly’s part makes it possible for us to work out how to accommodate most people’s preferences in a custom build.

Powder coating is a nice option for a custom build.  We work with a local powdercoater and we can get the frame bead blasted and powder coated any colour you like.  We can even get mud guards and racks coated to match the colour of the frame.  We’ve also had a fork chromed to go with a white frame.

If you are doing a custom LHT build we’ll almost invariably recommend dynamo lights.  Modern hub dynamos are so efficient and the LED lights are so reliable and bright that there is almost no downside to going this way, and if the wheels have to be custom built anyway, this takes a lot of the sting out of the associated costs.

We’ve set up a lot of bikes, and seen a few of the pitfalls of custom builds, so with our help you won’t wind up with brakes that interfere with fender or rack mounting, or tyres that barely fit under the fenders, or a too short/wide bottom bracket.  You won’t buy a stem that doesn’t fit your bars, or bars that don’t fit your levers.

Jack’s bike is a good example of a custom build.  We had the frame powder coated, with matching powder coated rims built onto nice hubs (including a Schmidt SON28 Dynamo hub on the front), his own choice of racks, 9 speed Dura Ace STI levers, LX cranks to lower the gearing so he can tow a Bob trailer, etc.  We have even had the rim on Bob trailer powder coated to match the frame.  It has a Supernova E3 Pro headlight and an E3 taillight, which are among the brightest lights out there.  The Dynamo is also hooked up to a USB charger mounted on a second stem that can recharge phones, cameras and so on.  He’ll be using that when he and his wife Lauren ride across America in late 2010.

LHT vs Crosscheck
A number of our customers have had to choose between the LHT and the Crosscheck.  The two bikes are broadly similar.  Both take wide tyres, use cantilever brakes, are robust and comfortable.  The pros and cons that separate the two are all just a matter of degree.  The Crosscheck is little zippier and handles a little quicker due to steeper angles, shorter stays and a more aggressive riding position.  The LHT has a few more braze-ons and takes racks and fenders a little better and gives you more heel clearance for panniers.  Basically, on the continuum from loaded touring bike to road bike the Crosscheck is one step closer to the road bike end.  It can also be used for it’s theoretical intended purpose – cyclocross.  Both can be made into very capable touring bikes or commuters.

We’ve just finished an exciting build. We used a 650B randonneur/porteur frame made by Velo Orange, called the Polyvalent. Ours might be the first in Australia. We’ve built it up as a showcase for some of the VO gear we stock (and as a great bike in its own right). It has a big VO Porteur front rack, VO cantilever brakes, headset, saddle, rims, etc. It has a dynamo hub, is shod with Grand Bois Hetres and stays upright while stationary thanks to a Pletscher bipod kickstand. It will soon have a VO chain guard.  We installed a B+M Lumotec IQ Cyo just under the floor of the rack, and a B+M tail light on the rear mud guard.

We lent the bike to Blakey, a local bike aficionado, friend and sometime customer.  Here’s a link to a flickr set he’s made to document his weekend with the bike.  You’ll notice we’ve stolen some of them for this post – he  takes a nice photo.  Blakey loved the bike and raved, in particular, about how it rides over rough ground.  Not surprising since the bikes that it’s inspired by were used by Parisian newspaper deliverers over rough cobbles.

It’s a great bike for taking medium-sized loads and is prefect for around town.  This is thanks to the frame geometry, which is optimized for carrying a load on the front, and running large-volume tyres, just like the old French bikes that inspired it. Blakey says it earned a lot of admiring looks, and it certainly looks right with something nice in the bidon cage.

This build came in at around $2500 and  is going to another of our favourite customers, but we’ll be building more. If you’re interested, drop by and have a talk – because the frame is so versatile, radically different builds are an option – it could be run as a single speed or with a gear hub.  I would really like to build one with drop bars and a small front rack that could be used for fast commuting and day trips in the country.

]]> http://commutercycles.com.au/news/2010/velo-orange/feed/ 4 http://commutercycles.com.au/news/2009/go-battery-free-with-a-dynamo/ http://commutercycles.com.au/news/2009/go-battery-free-with-a-dynamo/#comments Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:06:05 +0000 Commuter Cycles http://commutercycles.com.au/?p=572 If a bicycle is your main form of transport, you should consider a dynamo to power your lighting system.

Dynamos use the turning of your wheels to generate electricity, which can be then used to power your lights (or mobile phone, if you wish to get ambitious). Using the same system employed in windfarms, the dynamos now available have very little rolling resistance compared to those of yesteryear.

We stock both the excellent value Shimano hubs (the new 3N80 is brilliant), and the top shelf Schmidts (the SON 20R is THE dynamo hub). All will give you many years service, and mean less acid batteries end up in landfill.

The virtues of these dynamos are too numerous to mention, so drop in for a chat on how you can go battery free.

for more  information on these Dynamos

Shimano Nexus

Schmidt Dynohub

• Schmidt’s Webpage (mostly in German – not a lot of info)
• Peter White -The world’s #1 Schmidt advocate

One more thing – Because these dynamos are part of the hub, this nifty device will require you to replace your whole front wheel. A complete wheelbuild will cost around $300 with the Shimano hub dynamo.

Unlike a lot of cheaper L.E.D. lights available, these aren’t just to give you visibility on the road, they’ll illuminate the road ahead of you. Perfect for late night rides down the Merri Creek bike path.

Once you’ve seen these in action you won’t be able to go back.

Headlights typically in stock:

We also stock the E-Werk power supply, which allows you to charge and power any device you can think of using your dyno-hub.

As always we’re happy to get in other models to order.

Plenty of information and images are available at the Busch and Müller website.

We also love Schmitd  and Supernova lights.  The Schmidt Edeluxe is a deluxe version of the IQ Cyo and the Supernova E3 is the brightest thing going.

Planet Bike lights represent excellent value, with a variety of lights for different uses and budgets. Tail lights, headlights and helmet mount lights are all discounted, including our favourite, the ‘Blinky Superflash ‘.

There’s also a $100 service voucher up for grabs. This Monday’s Moreland Leader newspaper (13/04/2009) has all the competition details. You can also download a voucher from the City of Moreland website. Roll into the our Prentice Street Workshop, pickup a ‘Blinky’ or one of his friends, and you’ll be in the running. $100 dollars gets you a fair bit of bike love at Commuter Cycles, so it’s well worth the effort!

UPDATE!

Simon Stainsby, Sustainable Transport Officer at Moreland City Council popped into the workshop on 6th of May 2009 to pick a winner for the competition. In great impartiality, blindfolded (almost), he announced Michael of Fitzroy to be our winner!

Congratulations Michael, we look forward to seeing you and your bike soon!

Introducing ‘Blinky Superflash!‘. Sounds like a 1970′s cartoon character we hear you say.  But there’s nothing retro about these beauties, they’re state of the art, and they are BRIGHT!

The weather proof design also clips off easliy from the enclosed mount, which includes two ring sizes so you can fix them anywhere. We have extra mounts ($5) so you can securely attach them to packracks and baskets.

Each light set comes with AAA batteries included. The supplier, Planet Bike, donates 25% of their profits to Bicycle Advocacy, which is good for everyone.  We’re right behind folks that go the extra mile and do things like that.

Blinky also has siblings in the range. Little sister Blaze includes a 1/2 watt led that comes with a helmet mount, perfect for the Yarra or Merri creek bike trail, where a moment in the darkness can mean the difference between a ride and a swim.

Blinky Superflash: $35
More Info: Planet Bikes