Bike Light Repairs for Dummies

One of the more frustrating things about all those modern consumer products is that the vast majority of them, at least amy of them that involve a lot of electronic parts, tend to be utterly black-box in the way they're designed and constructed. With the possible exception of some more high-end products like our smartphones and laptops, all the damned things are pretty much disposable. That, however, did not seem to stop some poor schmuck from asking Google to tell him, "How to Repair a Bicycle Light,"¹ most likely when his battery-powered bike headlight crapped out on him. It also didn't stop eHowian Danny Donahue from pretending he had the answer for eHow.com (it's now niched over at HomeSteady.com for some unknown reason).

If you want to know the truth, we aren't all that sure we'd want to get bicycle repair advice from a person who opens said advice by telling us that,

"Whatever your reason for riding a bike, you must always think of safety first. Wear a helmet and pads, know the rules of the road and be sure your bicycle is equipped with reflectors and lights so that you can see and be seen at all times. Maintaining your bike is of the utmost importance as well. Grease the chain, change the break [sic] shoes and tires as necessary, and know how to repair your bicycle light so you can ride comfortably and safely day or night." Wait, what? "Wear pads"? "Grease the chain"? "Change the break shoes"? A pox on people who can't spell "brake"! But never mind that, what's this crap about pads and grease? You never put grease a bicycle chain, not to mention that only BMX riders wear pads, and they don't have lights on their bikes. An inauspicious beginning, indeed, Danny...

...and it got worse. According to Donahue, here are the steps in repairing your bicycle light:

1. "Have an assistant hold the handle bars of the bike with one hand to keep it steady [and] raise the rear wheel of the bicycle off of the ground."
2. "[S]pin the bike pedals to turn the rear wheel"
3. "Grasp the two probes of your bulb-type voltage tester keeping one in each of your hands. Hold the tip of one probe against the electrical lead on the back of the generator (also called the dynamo) located next to the rear wheel of the bike. Touch the remaining probe to the other lead on the generator. Look at the light on your tester to see if it lights up."

We fell on the floor laughing and quit reading at that point. You know why? Partially because it's been forty years (at least) since the last time anyone here saw a generator-type bicycle light, and second because no one asked about a generator – the OQ asked about a light.

A little research suggests that you can still find dynamo-powered lights out there, but that only a few old-timers (like our founder) use them. That may be because they're far less expensive than the rechargeable LED lights; but then, they're nowhere near as bright, especially at low speeds.
Still and all, Donahue dodged what we suspect to be the real answer: "You can't." Of course, if he had said that he would not have picked up his fifteen bucks from Demand Media, so for his greed (and the stupid crap he said in the introduction), we hereby name him our Dumbass of the Day.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_7996246_repair-bicycle-light.html

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