Quote:
Originally Posted by Sven7
Just cause I'm still logged in, I'll reply right away.
First, I would like to use some sort of bright paint job. Safety green is a bit conspicuous but maybe a nice 70's blue or lime green.
http://static.corradoworld.com/pictu...ciroco_MK1.jpg
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8152/7...24b9f49d_z.jpg
It would also need ample reflectors- probably the kind that look black until you shine a light on them- over the "painted black" areas.
Last, I would have LED running lamps. It might be good to make them flash like some motorcycle headlamps, and since it will be registered as such, that would be legal. Not sure how to go about putting together the lighting- do you know of any good threads? |
Yeah, bright paint color is very good, I understand your hesitation in painting the whole thing neon green. Reflectors are good at night when (if) you're being overtaken (more of a cycling issue), no good for any other circumstance. But forward lighting is key for the cross-traffic under right-of-way issue, which is a really critical and common scenario. Actually, the other supplementary solution I might be alone in suggesting is a chrome dome. Full daylight is the single condition where forward lighting tends to under-perform, in that scenario if all your top-half curved surfaces have a chrome finish then you become a source of glare.
Sorry, I don't know of any good threads I can direct you to for this purpose, and I'm not even totally happy with the available cyclist solutions (although I have some high power P7 LEDs in LiIon flashlights that I blind everyone with).
The thought I have put into this suggests the next place to look might be converting motorcycle luminaries to LED, but...
I'm not familiar with motorcycles period.
The end-game is getting tons of light sprayed indiscriminately across a wide azimuthal range, including the horizon and above during the day preferably in a flashing mode, then being able to direct it to the road so you can see where you're going at night without blinding oncoming traffic. Obviously automotive luminaries are really good at doing this but can't be converted to LED due to the specificity of the reflector design to the bulb type, and would be mechanically too big anyways.
Here's my other idea: Get a Magicshine, plus taillight. Turn signals would have to be a separate kit. You can try getting it without the battery pack and get a DC-DC converter so it can splice into your trike's battery, but that may just be extra work. Steal some road-pattern lenses from some cheaper lights so you can spread the pattern along the azimuth. Make a mechanical lever so you can toggle the hot spot height, up in everyone's eyes in the day, down on the road at night.