Rechargable Flashlights

[bc.gold 3,403]

These awesome flashlights once they quit working get tossed, they use a small sealed lead acid battery that is often the cause of the failure. The plastic case is easily disassembled for battery replacement and they're incredibly inexpensive to purchase.

 

 

 

 

[Sparky-(Admin) 21,300]

  Interesting...You own one of these? What’s the run time on a full charge? How many years did the battery last? 

  And of course, what’s a replacement battery going for? 

  

[wallfish 16,985]

Uh Oh, don't get Sparky going on his real passion, flashlights.

[bc.gold 3,403]

1 hour ago, Sparky said:

  Interesting...You own one of these? What’s the run time on a full charge? How many years did the battery last? 

  And of course, what’s a replacement battery going for? 

  

 

As of yesterday afternoon I own one, it's a rescue that needs a battery replaced, the bulb is LED so I imagine the current draw is negligible.

 

The battery shown below 6V 4.5 Ah for 20 hours, replacements are dirt cheap.

 

We know these as sealed battery's, on the label its clearly stated Spill Proof, you can not totally seal a lead acid battery as hydrogen gas is generated during the charging phase and needs to escape therein lies the problem.

 

After multiple charging cycles the water evaporates from the acid, over time battery performance diminishes gives you less amp hours than indicated on the label. Eventually 80 percent of the lead plates are high and dry above the acid level - the dry portion becomes sulfated. Years ago they made battery chargers to reverse this condition.

 

Now we have non serviceable sealed battery's, on some of the sealed units you can prize the tops off to add distilled water bringing the fluid level up enough to cover the plates.

 

I've never had any success with the practice as the plates have long ago become sulfated before the owner decides to toss the unit, those power packs for jump starting use a similar batt.

 

And I've never tried the epsome salts trick of rejuvenating a bad battery.

 

 

Edited July 15, 2019 by bcgold

[bc.gold 3,403]

We needed a replacement water valve for our washing machine and I remembered there was a similar model at the landfill so off we went for a short road trip.

 

While I was there a fellow shows up with a pick up truck, grabs a pail from the back then heads over to an old bath tub that he had previously been using to dump small stuff.

 

Turns out he's cleaning out a small shop of another fellow who recently passed, he had been a starter, generator and motor guy so that's the back story on how the growler ended up at the dump.

 

The last time we were there had found a couple of gears that I recognized as metal lathe change gears, I found a 41 tooth gear and Pat found four others and today the rest of the stack was brought in so now she has a full house to list on eBay.

 

For those not familiar with change gears these are used on metal lathes to change a threading operation, threads per inch and have to be manually changed whereas the new lathes have quick change, just flip a few levers to select a change in threads per inch, carriage and cross feed rates.

 

We got the water valve, the solidnoid on our has burnt out so the water keeps running.

 

My find of the day is an old telephone magneto, get Sparky to hang onto that pair of wire and give the crank a couple of turns.

 

The image is borrowed but clearly represents the magneto I have.

 

Edited July 15, 2019 by bcgold

[squonk 41,023]

Those batteries are used in in fire alarm,security systems,emergency lights ect. We used to have to change them every 2 years whether they were bad or not. Used to have piles of them.