Lights Out! — if you have a Niterider Solas taillight — time to upgrade your mount.

Last Sunday I took my cyclocross bike on an adventure on some mountain bike single track, I missed a turn and decided to bushwhack the 10 yards downhill to the correct trail and about halfway down I hit something, stepped off my bike but watched it fall akwardly on a stump. Little did I know at the time, but breaking the mount on my Niterider Solas tail light was one of the best things to happen to me that day.

You should break yours too.

The old mount had a simple connection, there was a band that wraps around your seat tube, and then a screw with a hand tightening nut on one end, and raw screw on the other. They anticipate mutliple seat tube dimensions, so the screw is longer than it needed to be.

Here’s it on my bike.

I’ve actually cut the screw down, as it used to stick out even longer and occassionally snagged my lycra or worse: skin.

The downside of this mount has been that while the strap would be pretty secure on your seatpost with a modest amount of torque, the light would flop down if you didnt crank the torque up to 11 (Spinal Tap unit of measurement, not Newton Meters). The mounting screw also tightens the the light mount piece to the seat post strap. It has a little bit of ribbed texture to give it some grip and hold it at the right angle, but not enough. You really had to torque down on the mount to keep it from moving around when you hit bumps.

I’ve always loved Niterider’s products. In the 90’s you couldn’t really even think of night mountain bike rides unless you had a Niterider setup. And night road rides were a heck of a lot safer with the lights they were producing. This particular mount was an exception, but fortunately, the replacement has been redesigned to my satisfaction.

The new mount is a rubber strap with eyelets, and a hook to strap the mount to a seatpost. Out of the box, the rubber is rather firm, and takes a bit of work to get through the first eyelet, even with a standard (27.2mm) sized seatpost. Perhaps it will become a little more compliant after a few times taking it on and off. It’ll be a heck of a lot easier to do that as well, since it’s a one movement process to remove or install on your seatpost. No more having to completely unthread a long(ish) screw.

The second best thing about the mount is that keeping the light at the angle you prefer is now something that you set with a recessed set-screw (no exposed threads) and once you tighten it down, its not going to move — as it’s no longer part of the same mechanism that connects it to your bike. Set it and forget it!

Now here’s a mistake I made that I’m going to consider a “Niterider Hack” as opposed to a mistake. Trying to find the mounts on their site is nearly impossible, as they are only shown if you scroll all the way to the bottom of the product page of the taillight itself. I happened to find the mount at the bottom of the “Cherrybomb” product page (a different light) by accident and added it to my cart from there. The Cherrybomb mount is $7.99, however, the Solas mount is $9.99. Shipping for me was USPS 1st class $4 or so. (I ordered a few)

The trade off on the Cherrybomb mount is a little less range of motion. That’s probably ok for 90% of applications where it’s mounted to a standard seat tube. If you are trying to mount to something else, like an aero seatpost, seat-stay or a seat stay bridge, you lose a little angular play, and the ability to rotate the mount 90 degrees.

The Solas mount still has the ability to rotate 90 degrees plus some different strap configurations, but has more moving parts, and the Cherrybomb mount seems like it is a lot sturdier. (Believe it or not, they still also offer the god-awful one I replaced.)

With both, the light clips onto both mounts using the same interface.

My god, it’s so much sturdier than the old one. And I’m not going to catch my shorts on that screw. What a relief.

Cherrybomb mount here:

Solas mount here:

For anyone who just read this whole thing and doesnt own a Niterider taillight, and was hoping I’d talk about it… It’s great, has a couple of different blinking and solid modes, the USB charged battery lasts a long time and it’s been a workhorse for me. I had one previously, that I rode all winter, through different weather conditions and didn’t keep the rubber stopper seated securely and ended up with the USB port corroded, but that was more user error. I’ve ridden the replacement through similar conditions but been careful to fully seat the plug and have had no issues. The light is either $40–50 retail depending on whether you get the 100 or 150 lumen version.