Any advise on whether it’s worth trying to save the battery please?. Red light has been coming on progressively early but stays red for approx 30 mins then dies. I have taken the battery apart and there is no apparent damage to the circuit board-it’s been in a water bottle so has been kept dry. Output volts when light is red is around 7.4v. When charger is plugged in, the charger light stays green & approx 8.4v is reaching circuit board. Have left it to charge but red light on back of the light still comes on straight away. Any ideas?

It might – maybe – be the cables – that’s where mine failed. Looked ok from the outside but when giggling the connector about the light would change modes or turn off. Charging became intermittent at the same time. I used one of their extension cables for the parts to fix.

Sounds to me like they’re just losing capacity – Have you run them completely flat at any point? Lithium ion cells really don’t like that and it can massively shorten their life (eg ability to hold charge).

pretty sure Leads are O.K I have run it to the point where it switches itself off but I assumed there is some kind of protection against battery over discharge?

There should be but with a cheap light and potentially mismatched cells (eg one cell has lower capacity than the others), discharging too far can still damage the pack. Or it could just be reaching the end of its life – how many charges has it had?

It’s only had 30 or so charges

I had similar problems with one of mine but managed to trace it to shorting at the point where the cable enters the connector (as per couldashouldawoulda). They seem particularly vulnerable to flexing or twisting at this point. I know you’ve all-but discounted this but it is worth a close inspection at that point.

My bodge was to strip and isolate the wires and then to form a flex protector from self amalgamating tape where the cable exits the connector. This has worked fine and recovered the battery pack to former capacity. Admitadly, I must have caught it fairly promptly to have got away with that though 🙂

I’ve since added this reinforcement/flex protection to all three battery packs, two lamp units and extension cable as a preventative measure. They’ve survived over a year so far with twice weekly use.
HTH

When I first got the light I reinforced all cable entry points on the connectors with extra layers of heatshrink sleeving as they seemed particularly weak-I will check again though-ta.

I’ve experienced something similar, I’m using the foreign 2 pin plug charger.

Noticed when I’d plug it in to charge the green light on the charger plug either stayed green of flickered red/green.

I have to give the plug a flick with the finger or it to go red and charges the battery.

Yip I know it sounds dodgy, but until i fork out for a uk one it’s the way it is.

That was my experience, take a look at the charger, if poss try someone else’s.

I have already resoldered a dry joint on the charger-had exactly the same symptoms. Pretty cack all in all but I suppose you either get lucky or not for £50. Still probably worth getting a new battery for it-is it Smudge that does replacements?

Yep – Smudge is your man! I have one on route to solve a similar problem… He told me his cells are a much better quality and higher amp-thing than the dx ones, so will give a longer run time, even compared to new dx…

Hope it comes tomorrow… It’s a bit dark out there.. 😯