Cycling UK Forum

I'm sure wagon wheels were much bigger when I was a lad......
I remember the big ever ready lights projected an x or a + on the road & little else and consumed batteries quicker than the paper round paid for replacements.
I swapped mine when funds allowed for a bottle dynamo powered lights....huge improvement.

Now available on cubay for a penny plus postage . The black tape is the light shielding I mentioned.

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?

Should be able to get an LED bulb to fit the old lamp. http://www.thetorchsite.co.uk/Universal_led_upgrades.html

If its the lamp I'm thinking of, I loved them - nice, big round light to help make you visible!

the above photo is the first version of the plastic front light, with the combined spring clip I mentioned. The later ones had the twist catch in the base and a more secure mount to the bike itself.

BITD one of the mad things I did was to carry an Ever unready front light on tour, on the basis that it would be a torch around the campsite as well as a (not very good) bike light. I even modified one so that it had a jack plug socket in the side of it, which was intended to run a 3V rear lamp in a dynamo lamp housing, using a simple ground return single wire arrangement. It wasn't a bad idea per se, but as usual I spent more time faffing with the light itself (for all the usual reasons) than I did using it. Even when the lamp was carried inside a pannier, the batteries still vibrated enough to generate black crud, bad contacts, etc etc.... all very tedious indeed.

cheers

Brucey wrote:the above photo is the first version of the plastic front light, with the combined spring clip I mentioned. The later ones had the twist catch in the base and a more secure mount to the bike itself.

BITD one of the mad things I did was to carry an Ever unready front light on tour, on the basis that it would be a torch around the campsite as well as a (not very good) bike light. I even modified one so that it had a jack plug socket in the side of it, which was intended to run a 3V rear lamp in a dynamo lamp housing, using a simple ground return single wire arrangement. It wasn't a bad idea per se, but as usual I spent more time faffing with the light itself (for all the usual reasons) than I did using it. Even when the lamp was carried inside a pannier, the batteries still vibrated enough to generate black crud, bad contacts, etc etc.... all very tedious indeed.

cheers

those were the good olde days of the bottle dynamo

Cunobelin wrote:
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

Thanks for that. I’m going to try something similar. We’ll see about the battery

tatanab wrote:

mercalia wrote:The slightest jolt and the battery lost contact with the bulb

which is why we used to push a piece of carboard between the batteries, to stop them moving.

cardboard worked until it got a bit soggy!

My memory is of going on winter evening club rides and having to put fresh batteries in at the mid point stop which handily always had a supply! With fresh batteries you could get a beam of about 20 feet - not that it helped in seeing anything as it really was quite feeble, i guess it was the mass of candles coming down the road that alerted oncoming traffic - but of course car headlights were less powerful too before the 'mines bigger/more powerful' than yours sales race got underway in the 80's.

Strangely the rear lights were much better - maybe it was being strapped under the saddle with the spare tub!

How did we survive? well it couldn't've been so difficult as we are mostly still here!

foxyrider wrote:
How did we survive? well it couldn't've been so difficult as we are mostly still here!

safety in numbers? In a group of ten, the chances of all the lights at one end going out simultaneously are pretty slim, even if the mean number working is only six or seven....

cheers

actually, the "lamp above" does have the hole already moulded in the base where the later rotating plastic catch went. Whether that was originally a rather large drainage hole which they then thought to use for the new catch, I don't know, but it is exactly the same diameter, I checked. I also note that they reduced the thickness of the main body except at the load points.

nez wrote:

Cunobelin wrote:
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

Thanks for that. I’m going to try something similar. We’ll see about the battery

At the time, I used Reflectalite as my source

Lots of info here

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.

The problem always came about after a period of not being used. You were delayed and cycled home in the dark, literally as the light wouldn't work.
I suspect you are very disciplined regarding maintenance and this is why your view of Ever Ready lights is positive. Most users back in the day were more like me.

I well remember these lights.
At the time with fresh batteries they were adequate for their purpose but of course the light dwindled away to nothing over a couple of hours - particularly in the cold.
At the time my eyes were young and I'm sure that was useful - I wouldn't want to try relying on one today.
Of course the road surfaces in the fifties and sixties were far better than today and I wonder if these lamps would have been sufficient to see potholes in time. I wouldn't fancy relying on one for a fast training ride.

francovendee wrote:I suspect you are very disciplined regarding maintenance and this is why your view of Ever Ready lights is positive. Most users back in the day were more like me.

Yes, disciplined ............. but more like obsessive!

This is the same for most things though. Many things aren't reliable if you don't look after them. Less so these days, but the principle is still there.

Those ER lights were terrible for reliability, but so were torches generally. Many was the time you had the bang the end of the torch hard to rattle the batteries for a better contact, take the batteries out and clean the tarnishing off the contacts. I had a torch once, that I had to slip a piece of paper in with the batteries to hold them tight.

They all needed TLC to work, but these days battery lights are "fit and forget" with many of them rechargeable via USB. We tend to forget what the old days were like.

Here you are Mick. Just waiting for you

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-70s-80s-Ever-Ready-Front-and-Rear-Cycle-Lights/174200142739?hash=item288f233b93:g:yAIAAOSwa5ReUqSo

batteries not included

Thanks, but there's some bits missing from the rear lamp.
There should be two hex bolts, a plate, two washers and two nuts to form the clamp for the RH seatstay.