A very specific lights question

I have a Tumble and Fall “1600” Lumen light I got through SportPursuit a couple of years ago. Towards the end of last winter the battery stopped charging. They chased it up for me and supplied me with a new battery (I was still within the 2 years EU electronics warranty thing) and all was good for a while. I’ve just tried to charge it up and it’s exhibiting the same problem. It’s more than 2 years now so I’m down to either trying to replace the battery or just buying a new light set.

The light and battery look like this…

The battery pack looks like this inside the plastic cover…
(The AA is just for scale).

What does the collective think?

Would think Smudge could replace it with 4 18500 cells. You’ll need to figure out the output voltage of the pack and send him the lead.

Beat me to suggesting sending it to Smudge to sort out ❗

As above contact smudge at mtbbatteries or torchy the battery boy about a replacement battery.

Based on my recent experience with Smudge at MTBBatteries.co.uk I would thoroughly recommend him.

Hope that helps.

What are you doing to kill them? Options include:
1. Regularly running the batteries totally flat.
2. Leaving the light unit connected to the battery all the time.
3. Storing them in a warm place.

None of the above!! Is there a chance the charger is faulty? When I plug the charger into the lights, a little green light on the charger illuminates, but it should be red until the battery is fully charged.

Sounds to me like a faulty charger is leading to option 1. Do you know anyone with a multimeter that could check it ?

I’ll see what I can do. What would I be checking for?

I like the idea of just getting a replacement battery but not to bugger it up!

With the chargers there is not normally much you can do to check them. Firstly they are normally a sealed unit and you trash them when opening and secondally it could be a component failure that makes it difficult to repair.

The connector on the battery and light appears to be the same as the magicshine lights do you know the specification of the battery at all? Voltage and amp hour capacity? If these are the same as the magic shine units you may be able to try a charger that is cheaper than the £35 genuine replacement.

Assuming the battery is an 8v pack, you need to check that the output from the charger is approx. 9v and that the battery voltage increases from about 6v when totally flat to about 8.4v when fully charged. If the battery never gets to 8.4v then it’s likely that the charger is buggered. If the battery is below 5.8v then it’s knackered and time to replace.