Mar 12, 2010
PeaPodLT meets Kit from KnightRider
I’ve been wanting to find a great rear light for my PeaPodLT for months now. Unfortunately, nothing seems to clip well to the various openings on the back of the seat, so I’ve come to terms with the need to modify.
This post details the modification process, but I’ve only just put it on, so I can’t necessarily recommend this product for the long haul, yet. Will add to this post as I learn more about the light itself. My main concerns are, as with all LED lights, battery life, and then with this particular install, gradual rattling of hardware such that the light becomes loose or falls off.
The light is a German rear seatpost light made by Sigma.

First, you need to disassemble the light mount probably intended for the seat post and rescue the two plastic parts – one of which accepts the light, the other as a kind of wedge to orient the light more or less perpendicular to the ground (very nice on the sloped back of the PeaPod).


Using a 3/8″5/32″ bit, drill a hole through the PeaPod shell that emerges below the level of the seat pad on the other side (to cushion your little rider’s back from the minimal hardware we will use to attach the light to the seat.


After a good while of searching for a nut that would work on the existing screw that held the seatpost mount assembly together, I finally just switched to a slightly larger diameter screw and nut combo I had in my hardware bin. The nice thing about this, is that the screw bound a little to the plastic of the light mount and the seat, acting as a kind of built in loctite to prevent excessive rattling. Additionally, the nut I found was very flat, and the overall length of the hardware was such that there was no sharp screw end poking through the nut. Screw + nut were flush (well, pretty much) under the pad.


The light has a nice feature that it can be mounted horizontally, for that KnightRider effect, or vertically. This light has a few different patterns, some of which are intermittent enough that they won’t likely draw down the two AAA batteries too fast.


More to come!
Nice idea. Not only secure against falling off, but protected reasonably from theft. I’d note, however, that these flashers often have a visibility “sweet spot,” so I suggest anybody doing this check the angle they’re mounting at to ensure the flasher is projecting maximum brightness as perceived by an observer a hundred feet behind the bike. Angled a few degrees off axis can result in a dimmer display to the oncoming motorist. FWIW, nothing has impressed me more than the Planet Bike SuperFlash amongst the selection inexpensive tail lights available at most bike shops.
I have a non rigid method of mounting a superflash that I describe here (at the bottom of this post):
http://jnyyz.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/xtracycle-accessories-bungie-cord/