cheap bike light

LED lights have popped up all over the market place and I recently saw some very nifty little flashlights at Advance Auto stores for $2.50 each. These guys come with 3 AAA penlight batteries and put out an amazing amount of light. I've been thinking these would make nice bike lights if you could come up with a simple and light weight means to attach them to your bicycle. I prefer a system that allows the light to be easily attached and removed and still allow the light to be carried in your pocket or bike bag.

I decided to make a saddle to attach to the light that would let it sit on the handle bar and use rubber bands to hold the light to the bars.

The saddle is made from a couple scraps of 1" diameter thinwall bike tubing. I used a section about 1/2" long and cut that ring of steel into thirds. I welded 2 of these little arcs of steel together using my mig welder mostly because I wanted to practice using the welder. I think you could use aluminum tubing from lawn chairs or PVC pipe or most any material and glue the pieces back to back with epoxy glue such as JB Weld. The joint strength here probably doesn't need to be very high as this saddle just keeps the light pointing straight ahead. When the saddle was welded together I glued one side of it to the flashlight using double sided tape and also used double sided tape to attach a little rectangle of inner tube rubber to the other surface to give padding and traction where the saddle contacts the bars.

Here is a shot of the light strapped onto the bars using a couple small rubber bands cut from inner tube.