cheep ebay lights

yeh yeh I should know better, but just a little warning. my charger just blew up :shock: a loud bang from the kitchen the circuit board is burnt out, the cover ended up in dogs bowl 3 meters away and its only the 2nd time I've charged them.
this is the listing for the solarstorm.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/221260426407? ... EBIDX%3AIT

going to have the sparky at work have a look, I think the lights themselves are ok but not the charger. anyone know if there is a uk supplier for chargers?

Sort of lol, been stung myself with a solarstorm from a UK seller, until i got a message before it'd been sent, UK stock hk seller! Battery wasn't charging looked closer, they'd sent a 4.2v charger, anyway they're going to send a 8.4v but got to wait a month for it to come, but candbseen stock them, so going to buy one of them.

Re:

Yes, the QA on these kinds of lights seems somewhat suspect. The Chinese national sport of cost cutting rears its ugly head I guess. I bought some which looked very much like yours (no name though) plus some absolute monster 3 led ones (seriously they are like car headlights).

Both of mine have been absolutely fine - but I noticed a lot of reviews on Amazon appear afterwards which reflected similar experiences to both of you i.e. wrong chargers, them blowing up etc in amongst completely positive reviews. The good news is that I rarely see any bad comments about the lights or the batteries (providing waterproofing precautions are taken with the batteries).

Having had them though, it's hard to go back to normal lights.

Re:

I'll just say I've had similar experience with brand stuff at work with these generic style of chargers. They're all the same no matter what they come with.


The charger tops rip off, they stop working properly, etc...

Unfortunately its not just cheap Chinese eBay light. It is everything now.

For the record my charger for my single light 'rose' from a few years back is
MTLC-0420-1000 (model)
With 4.2V 1000mA centre positive output.
Uses an adaptor for our plugs
And works fine for the many years and the light and artery are still lasting for an age.

jimplops":3g2u8ser said:

Sort of lol, been stung myself with a solarstorm from a UK seller, until i got a message before it'd been sent, UK stock hk seller! Battery wasn't charging looked closer, they'd sent a 4.2v charger, anyway they're going to send a 8.4v but got to wait a month for it to come, but candbseen stock them, so going to buy one of them.

Click to expand...

Voltage needed will depend on the battery setup, which will be based on the led configuration in the unit.

I charge up to 10 Li ion and IMR batteries every day (vaper) but will only buy batteries and chargers from reputable people. There is so much fake stuff out there, the originals might be marginal, the clones can be deadly.

Torchy the Battery Boy (on Ebay as big_f_d_d also sells a bit cheaper on the UK Vapers site http://ukvapers.org/Thread-Torchy-battery-prices ) sells genuine stuff, obviously a bit more expensive than the Chinese drop shippers but he's got a reputation. He gives honest advice, even talking me out of buying a charger from him (the one I wanted was out of stock so was going to compromise - he steered me to someone who had them)

My torches are generic cree 18650s but it seems to be the charging side that is dangerous. I don't skimp there.

I have those lights and will bear it in mind.

I have a Solarstorm and a single spot light generic one too.

So far I have not had a problem with any of the kit.

I have noticed some variance of the lights themselves as I used two lights from different suppliers for the 12hr lawnmower race in the summer and one set (mine) lasted about 4 hours on the standard 4 cell battery and about 8 hours on an enhanced 6 cell battery I bought. Where the other example that baz77 bought ran for about half that time on the same batteries.
I have also seen a picture of another setup where the battery had exploded.
Knowing what I do about li-ion and li-po (taught to me by an electrical design engineer and test guy who builds li-ion and li-po chargers for the MOD) the batteries only go bang because of charger failure.
Chargers must pulse at a certain voltage for a certain period of time and then stop. During the pulse due to battery chemistry a crystal structure start to grow from the negative side of the battery towards the positive and if continuous charging happens it eventually joins the two halves in an internal short causing thermal runaway and explosion/fire. When the charging pulse stops the crystal dissolves back into the battery chemistry so charging can start again.
I had thought about investing in a high quality charger for my batteries, but for now I will charge them in an RC lipo charge bag.

Oh and a friend spotted this (thinking of one our group as he had to buy the Solarstorm x3 to out do my x2):
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Trustfire-120 ... 2c83240236

Do you need this much light? Will probably give you a suntan at 5 feet

Carl.

woah - thats a monster!

thinking about it now im pretty sure that it said the item was in the uk when I bought it and it arrived in about 2/3 days. their other items are listed as in the uk, strange how its now base in china