Cycling UK Forum

They were expensive rubbish that performed dreadfully (if at all) to produce a nugatory trickle of so-called light: utter, unreliable, crap, and I’m glad to see the back of them.

Sorry.
Your's were expensive rubbish etc etc.

Mine weren't.
They were lavished with tender loving care.

If they had one single disadvantage, it was that they needed constant TLC.

Mick F: by extrapolation, does Vaseline stop a bike from sinking?

Glug
Glug
Glug

And no, that's not me drinking wine.

Happy days.

Mick F wrote:I had Ever Ready lights and they were fine.
Yes, I mean it. Fine.

What you have to do, is keep all the contacts clean and coated in a film of Vaseline.
Use good quality batteries and fit Xenon bulbs and keep everything clean .......... and coated in Vaseline ............ I said it again coz it's very important!

I commuted for years with them and latterly used NiCads.

My experience too. I used this sort metal front lights with a double battery - don't think you can get those batteries now. We used those lights as torches as well because they gave a good beam. The contacts were on the battery so every time you changed it you got new contacts. Never has any problems wit the back light either.

You can get screw in LED bulbs. I used them in Petzl Zooms. Better than anything else but expensive. Modern head lights are so much better. Why not just graft a LED inside?

pete75 wrote:

Mick F wrote:I had Ever Ready lights and they were fine.
Yes, I mean it. Fine.

What you have to do, is keep all the contacts clean and coated in a film of Vaseline.
Use good quality batteries and fit Xenon bulbs and keep everything clean .......... and coated in Vaseline ............ I said it again coz it's very important!

I commuted for years with them and latterly used NiCads.

My experience too. I used this sort metal front lights with a double battery - don't think you can get those batteries now. We used those lights as torches as well because they gave a good beam. The contacts were on the battery so every time you changed it you got new contacts. Never has any problems wit the back light either.

I seem to remember the switch was also rubbish after a time loosened so became unreliable?

atleast seeing them again reminds me how far things have gone with even cheap Lidl battery lamps that are worthy of being called a cycle light

mercalia wrote:they were RUBBISH

The slightest jolt and the battery lost contact with the bulb. And the feeble light...........how on earth did we survive them. Dont tell me any one ever toured with them? They were only fit for being seen in the town

who was the company that made them? they dont exist to day?

That's all they were meant for really. I still use one of those 1960s streamlined rear Ever Ready rear lights on one bike, the one that takes one D cell and has a screw on circular red part. It is quite a good light.

My recollection of them is being glad to see the back of them. I did clean all the electrical contacts regularly but IIRC there were numerous contacts within the circuit and some were not easy (‘impossible even’) to access. At the time the local bike shop said to me that these things (dc lights) failed due to electrolytic(?) corrosion, there will be a grain of truth in that somewhere. They also said Dynamo’s (ac lights) were better because their contacts didn’t corrode in the same way.

At one point I was running Ever Ready lights with rechargeable batteries and the new (the far better than tungsten) Xenon bulbs. Halogen bulbs for Dynamo’s changed everything and I moved towards those two, much more light and no more worries about discharged batteries.

LED bulbs are available but there’s some question about (lack of) prefocus.

If I were to use these lights again then the solution used by fullupandslowingdown appeals to me.

What I think would be really good is cost effective LED battery lights that used D cells, recon you could do many weeks of commuting without worrying about battery drain. Every Ready had the basis of such a product but I suppose no interest in customers buying less batteries.

How many variations of the Eveready lights were there?

I had the later angled lense set which had a twist base latch and twist off lense.

Happy days!

Cheers James

I remember in the very early days, using something stuffed under the bottom contacts when fitting extra heavy batteries like varta alkalines to stop the batteries pushing the contacts so far down that they lost contact with the top springs. I think later models had plastic moulding modified to prevent the same. Maybe you only used better quality batteries which weren't so heavy i.e made more of steel casing then active ingredients.

I've had at least 4 variations, changes from sprung copper strip to spring coil for example, and changes to the fitting. Some were a sprung clip and fell off very easily, my preferred were the ones with a plate and nuts and bolts.

I've tried a replacement LED for incandescent bulb, got it from hailfods. The focus was too far back making the light pool indistinct and worse than it should have been. I then accidentally blew it

Ah, another edit. D cells. I think you'll find that a good quality AA cells actually give more bang for your buck, or precisely more Wh per gram weight. for instance, 157g for an Ansmann 10Ah D Vs 31g for an Ansmann 2.6Ah AA. You might say that for the extra run time, it's worth a 25% weight penalty. But there is also the convience of recharging. It takes longer to recharge a 10Ah than 2.6Ah as you know, without a rapid rapid charger you might have to forego using the 10Ah ones for a whole day, which means if you need to go out, a second pair. Ansmann 10Ah are cheaper per Wh than their 2.6 admittedly, £15 Vs £5 for two. But batteries don't last forever, they might get stolen, they can go bad so you'd be losing more dosh if a 10Ah went rogue.

Jamesh wrote:How many variations of the Eveready lights were there?

several;




1D rear light. The front lamp above had a screw-type switch, requiring several turns to make a sound connection or disconnection. This was replaced by a switch which required just a part turn;


late 60's early 70's front light, with converter so that you could use standard cells and not the 'special battery'. [IIRC a knock-off of this light was made by 'Pifco' and these were even worse].


2D rear light.
These were current when I was a kid. To replace the batteries in the rear light required that the lens was pried off. IIRC you only had so many goes at this before the lens tended to pop off by itself as you went down the road, spewing yet more easily broken bits and pieces everywhere. I also had (for a while) a similar front light which was switched on by rotating the whole lens unit on the front of the light; this also allowed some focus adjustment. If you were daft enough to leave the batteries in the light over the summer you could expect to find the contacts and even the metal housings corroded into uselessness. However these lights were (in the late 70s?) replaced by these



and then these, in the 1980s



There was a (slightly rare now, I'd imagine) first version of the plastic type of front light, in which a single stainless steel spring clip (which stuck out the top of the lamp at the back) was meant to both hold the lamp together and hold the lamp on the bike. Needless to say this flapped about like crazy and was soon 'outroduced' and replaced by the more familiar type.

All the lamps above shared a common feature; none of them were very reliable. I can't begin to imagine the hours wasted by folk trying desperately to get these blessed things to work.

IIRC some of these crappy lights were called 'night rider'; needless to say they soon got a different name to that, rhymed and all.

cheers

Mick F wrote:Sorry.
Your's were expensive rubbish etc etc.

Mine weren't.
They were lavished with tender loving care.

If they had one single disadvantage, it was that they needed constant TLC.

That’s kind of the point though isn’t it? That they (very likely) worked when new but to keep them working well required experience, skill and time that only a small percentage of users could reasonably be expected to have. I won’t go so far as to say that they weren’t fit for purpose - if imperfectly I made them ‘work’ for me and must have covered many miles with them - but really no light should need the levels of care that were required to keep them going and get the best out of them.

British manufacturing is (was?) amongst the best in the world, but we also do seem to have the ability to serve up flawed products and then lack the commercial will to sort their deficiencies out. Ever Ready were the name in torches but poor products and poor commercial attitudes mean that they’re no longer in business - to my mind that’s a shame.

The model I used were those just prior to the night riders, see Brucey’s post above.

FWIW the plastic lights were also the first to have a prismatic lens. This undoubtedly scatters light in all directions as intended, and this presumably improves your visibility to other road users. But if you wanted to see where you are going, it wasn't so good; it seemed to me that the amount of light on the road was substantially reduced and furthermore, the beam had a load of weird shaped artefacts in it, which meant that it was more difficult to identify hazards in the road.

All of which was entirely academic if the light wasn't actually working....

cheers

As I keep saying, and have said so on the other threads about these lights, mine were fine.
Look after them, keep good batteries in them, keep the contacts clean and lubed, and they will work fine.

They were what they were. Of the age and of the technology as it was.
They worked fine for me, commuting on unlit roads for YEARS.

nez wrote:I have an old Major Nichols bike and it occurred to me an Ever Ready bike light would fit brilliantly on it. Of course I'm old enough to have ridden with Ever Not Ready lights and they were pretty poor to compare with today's lights. So then I formed the mad plan to fit a modern light inside the old Ever Ready case. Anyone done it? Is there a particular modern light which will do the job?

...ish

Did this on my Delibike

Hovis livery and rod brakes so seemed appropriate

The rear was fitted with a 3 LED replacement bulb, which was fine. The front was. a high power LED, but two issues. Heat and battery life. The heat can distort the plastic reflector, and battery life is less than an hour