Dynamo Hub Light Fail

[Geonz]

I have a Busch Muller dynamo hub on my bike and ... when it was new it was brilliant.
Two years ago I sprang for the light that had the extra USB port ... well, the first light rain shower that failed due to poor design but I got a different brand of same thing from SIneWave cycles. I wired that on and things were peachy for a while.

Then it started to fail to hold a charge. It was acting as if, say, something was in the USB port draining from it ...
... and then a big wind blew the bike over and hte whole housing broke apart.

So... I replaced the light with the much improved newer model (which Peter White Bicycles sold me for half price given the issues with the first one, tho' it was well past warranty and I'd thoroughly violated same installing the Sinewave...)

... but ... it's doing exactly the same thing. On the moonlight ride last night, I thought I had to ride faster than I should have to get it to "bright" (it has two brightnesses), but figured it might need some time to store up some energy. Nope... 8 miles out, middle of nowhere, it's just ... going out. Nuthin'. Now, if I sped up to 15-18 mph, and on that one little hill thing, it would blaze in all its glory... then die.

I s'pose I should first check the instrucitons to make sure I haven't forgotten a step in installation, and/or see if it's sending energy to the USB port (I don't have a place to *put* the phone or I'd have done that)... or figure out if there's osmething going wrong in the actual hub??? These things are supposed to last forever...

[Pax]

You have way more patience than I do, I'd have taken a hammer to it by now.

[wnyrider]

Was it the Sinewave Reactor that started failing to hold a charge and broke, or the Revolution?

It sounds like you had the B&M Luxos U. Is this newer model still the Luxos U? B&M newest model is the IQ-X. If you do have a new Lexos U, did you have anything charging in the USB port while you were running the light? From what I gather, you cannot use the USB and lights simultaneously.

[Geonz]

It was the Luxos U and yes, the one I have now is an IQ2. . The Sinewave never gave me a problem. ( it's a Revolution).

I haven't even tried to charge anything through that port ... tho' could the switch be "on" and *think* something's plugged in?

I had actually planned on just getting one of the other lights -- the ones with less plastic and more metal -- and figuring out how to get the sinewave rolling on it. When I got the offer for hte half price light, I figured I'd go for it.

I have another generator hub on my Gazelle that doesn't have the USB Port ... might be a "Fly." That, also, doesn't have any problems... so I am thinking of swapping that out -- but if it's somethign wrong with the hub that would be a wasted effort except for the diagnostic.

(And it's not really patience at all... )

[OakLeaf]

I have zero input on your particular devices, but generally, it sounds very much like you have a short somewhere. Is it possible that when you "thoroughly violated the warranty," some wire maybe didn't get properly shrink-tubed or something of that nature? It might have worked fine at first because the hot wire didn't come in contact with ground until bumps and vibration moved everything around a bit.

Electrical problems on motorcycles are miserable to diagnose ... be glad you only have a small wiring harness to deal with.

[Geonz]

I thoroughly violated the warranty on the old one...not this one.
... but I believe I've solved it.

WIth the old one, with many lousy design features, the wiring was prone to being yanked out. With the new one, I was glad to see that there was a connection to the light that was meant to be actually put on like you meant it... basically, it's a lot easier to set up so that you don't just snag the wire between light and hub and yank things apart.

WIth the new one... well, we'd put the connection into the same one as the old -- the one on the left. Except the reason it was on the one on the left on the old one was because the connections had broken on the one on the right.

THe one on the right says "IN" -- as in, energy goes "IN" from the hub... and the one on the left says "OUT," because it's there if you want to hook up a taillight.

So... I'll shorten things a *little* bit... the hub is now connected to the "IN" slot and it seems that it didn't short anything because that thing stayed on the whole commute home and I'm pretty sure it was in BRIGHT mode.

I do want to head down to our MakerSpace and use the nifty tools there to make the "IN" connection as solid as the "OUT" connection is ... then I just might hook up a tail light...
... and what makes me even happier is the idea that the old light is probably still fine -- well, except for all the physically broken parts which a little ductape could fix -- but wasn't working becasue I'd switched to the "out" port.

[Sky King]

Whew, glad you figured it "out" Was all ready to have the Bike Hermit comment as he builds many a dyno hub wheel, plus we sell the lights and hub you have. Peter White is great - he is the primary distributor for busch & muller in the U.S. so we buy the majority of the lights we offer through him. I can't imagine not have a dyno hub.