A good night ride is an extremely exhilarating experience and I highly recommend this to anyone who has not already tried it. I would also suggest that you invest in a good light system first!

A few years ago I decided to have a crack at the much talked about night ride, so I set about doing a little research on lighting systems to see what was on the market. After exhaustive internet searches and reading of magazine articles I decided to go for the Lumicycle Halogen system. At the time Lumicycle was in its infancy with the manufacturing of all light units taking place in the company founders garden shed. The relatively unknown company had already received rave reviews in the MTB press for the low maintenance and high quality of their halogen system which was then and still is today very competitively priced.

I have now been using this system over four years and have never had any issues with reliability. I originally purchased the Twin lamp NIMH system which consisted of two handlebar mounted Halogen lamp units and a NIMH (Nickel Metal Hydride) battery pack with a fast charger to speed up the recharging process.

I have since upgraded the NIMH battery for a Li-ion (Lithium Ion) battery pack for several reasons. The type of battery that powers your light system should be given great consideration before you make your purchase, the three main battery types on the market at present are the aforementioned NIMH, Li-ion and Ni-Cad (Nickel Cadium) batteries. Of these the most popular are the Li-ion and NIMH batteries, Ni-Cad are being slowly phased out due to their harmful effect on the environment when disposed of irresponsibly when their life span has expired.

Of the two other battery types, Li-ion is the more expensive, this is why you will pay a premium price for systems that use Li-ion battery packs. There are of course many benefits in choosing Li-ion over a NIMH battery. As strange as it may seem, all batteries have a memory, this will determine the amount of charge held by the battery upon recharging. NIMH batteries suffer from negative memory effect when charged from a semi-depleted state, in other words, these batteries must be completely depleted before recharging. If this procedure is not adhered to your NIMH battery will not receive a full charge when being recharged, this means running the risk of going out on your next night ride with a run down battery that could die at an unpredicted time, this would be well dodgy if you were speeding down a rocky descent and were suddenly plunged into complete darkness!

The benefits of the Li-ion battery are many, for a start they do not suffer from memory issues that plague NIMH batteries and can be charged from any state of depletion, meaning that as soon as you return from your night ride you just need to pop it in the charger and top up the charge. Li-ion batteries feature a greater energy density which results in a battery that is smaller in size and has lower weight than a comparable NIMH battery.

Lumicycle offer battery packs in either bottle type which will fit standard bottle cages or in a bag system which is secured to the frame of your bike via Velcro straps. I have gone for the bag option as with many of todays suspension frame designs there just isn’t any room for a bottle cage.

Another upgrade I made was to purchase the optional Lumicycle Helmet mount. This is available in a twin lamp or single lamp configuration, I personally chose the single lamp option. The mount is supplied with an extension lead which will allow for the lamp to be connected to a battery that is being stowed in a Camelbak.

The main decision for this was due to off road cycling, when riding switch backs or cresting any hills there will be a short period of time when handlebar mounted lights will not be lighting the trail in front of you, the helmet mounted option will always have the light focused in the same direction as you are looking making off road cycling much safer and a lot more fun.

My second lamp has now been made redundant as the output of light from this single lamp is exceptionally bright. The lamp bodies are CNC machined alloy and have a simple wiring loom inside the lamp body that connects to the halogen lamp. These lamps can be bought in any electrical store, and are in fact the same lamps that you will find in ceiling spotlights. The beauty of this is the low cost of lamp replacement should you ever break one, and the fact that these lamps are available in a variety of beam patterns, ranging from 10 ° spot to 30 ° flood options allowing you to customize the beam pattern of your chosen set up. These lamps are also available in different wattage outputs which will result in even greater light output for higher wattage lamps with the trade off being shorter burn times than lower wattage lamps.

The lamps are completely serviceable by the consumer with all parts available separately should you ever need any spares.

The lamp bodies are available in various anodized colour for the fashion conscious rider who is looking to pimp their ride!

On my regular night rides where there can be as many as twelve riders all using different light systems from HID to LED, I can honestly say that my Single lamp Lumicycle halogen system will out-perform systems that cost twice as much in both light intensity and burn times from a single charge.

A twin lamp bar mounted halogen system with Li-ion battery can be purchased for as little as £169.99 direct from Lumicycle.

Lumicycle also offer HID lamp systems and have three Li-ion battery pack options available in the Elite, Pro and Enduro battery which increase expected burn times.

More information on Lumicycle systems can be found at www.lumicycle.com.

Thanks to Nigel Elder for the reviews.

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