Making a New Part For My Bicycle Tail Light

© Eugene Brennan

If possible I always repair rather than replace. I've always done this before it became a trendy green thing, simply because it saves money and I've never had lots of money to spare. I remember my father fixing a hole in the silencer on the car, with a section of tin plate, cut from a Cow & Gate baby formula tin, and fixing it to the silencer with coat hanger wire. So I didn't lick it up off the ground, as the saying goes. I've got slagged off by Millennials and successive demographic cohorts, for doing such things, and asked why I don't "just but a new one". Anyway, today I was fixing the tail light for my bike. I caught it in a gate on the Ballymore 5k loop trail yesterday, and snapped off the flanged section of plastic that slots into the bracket on the bike. This is the second light this has happened to. (I keep forgetting those gates are on springs, so they close after you pass through and manage to snag anything sticking out, such as my bike lights). So I decided to repair the light today, as a challenge. I bought four of these: One was lost the first day I used it when I hit a bump on a road and it hopped out of the mounting bracket (mental note: don't trust this setup and always wrap some tape around the bracket). I lost another one and then found it in a ditch a fortnight later. That was donated to my grand-nephew, who I don't think even uses it (could do with it back). The third one I bought is suffering from intermittent failure, which seems to depend on temperature as it turned off rapidly when put in the freezer as a test of my hypothesis. This one, the fourth, was working fine, until I annoyingly snapped a piece off it yesterday. I'm finding it difficult to buy AAA-powered bicycle lights online and while these ones are super-bright, they're no longer available. All bicycle lights now appear to be rechargeable, which adds more complexity and points of failure.

I made the new part from metal strips that I think were left behind by the people who fitted new PVC windows, They're used to attach the windows to the masonry. I managed to cut my fingers when the screwdriver slipped. However that sort of thing is pretty normal when doing jobs like this—I've lost count of the number of minor injuries I've had over the last 50 years. It wasn't possible to put the light in a vice because of its awkward shape and because of the danger of crushing the casing or lens. I didn't have any countersunk head machine screws, so I just used some slotted-head screws left over from fixings used to attach magnets for burglar alarm sensors.