I killed a battery the other day. It got immersed in water. As did the rest of the bike – and me – when I rode into the canal on the way back from the pub on a night ride 😳
I’ve ordered a replacement so I took the old one apart to see what was wrong. It’s got 4 18650 cells and a tiny circuit board which I guess is a protection circuit.
Each of the cells is pumping out a good 3.7ish volts but together it’s only giving out somewhere between 10 and 13 volts, with a weird pulsing so the meter is going up and down like a mad thing. So I guess it’s the circuit that doesn’t like the water.
I’ve snipped out all the connectors to the circuit board and connected the lead to the pos & neg at the end of the cluster so I’ve now got 4 18650 cells in series kicking out about 15 volts.
What is the risk of attaching this to my Lumicycle LED3 light (it’s supposed to be OK up to 17v and has some thermal overload protection) and my charger? I’m only planning to use it as a spare once the new one arrives.
The cells are Samsung SDI, ICR18650-26A