Warm Batteries

lego

I think I've been over charging my electron light battery. They are the old ones (no low battery indicator). It's an 6V 4800 mha battery and the charger is a 6V 1000ah.
I've been charging them for 8 hours from flat and to be honest they do get a bit warm.
I've just been on a battery charge calculator and it recons that the charge time is only 5.8
hours. The reason is I'm not sure if was me but lately I've thought that it wasn't as bright as it use to be so I was wondering if I was charging them long enough. But the funny thing is the burn time is still about 2 hours with the 5w and 10w on? What do you think chaps.

supersonic

COuld be that the battery is past its best now. They take precise care.

Great Ayton

Unless you are using a Delta Peak charger (it has to be the correct sort for the battery type) you have to unplug the batteries when they are charged or you will permanently damage your battery (some chargers are on a timer and will tern them self off though) Batteries are meant to get warm when charging but not really hot. A good indication of over charging is the battery getting warm. Some old charges even use temperature probes to indicate when the battery is charged. Though with modern fast charges this is not very effective as charging at over 5ah will get them very hot be them charged or not.

For instance a 4800mah batter will take 4 hours 48 minuets from being totally discharged to charged. But you should always fun your battery from flat (or if its lithium to its minimal level) before charging. You should NEVER charge over this time on a standard charger. Its possible if the charger is older that it is no longer charging at its rated level.

But if its a Delta Peak charger (also called auto chargers or something like that) it will just trip its self on to a very slow trickle charge to maintain the battery level when its charged. If that is the sort of charger you are using you can normally let it stay like that for most of a day safely.

Halogen bulbs degrade with age and over operation cycles. So a new bulb will be considerably brighter than that of a bulb that is nearing the end of its life.

2hours run time is about correct for your system though. So you cant have done to much damage yet. Just be careful not to over charge your batteries to much or to often or you will damage them for good.

Hope that helps

lego

Yea, that did help. The charger is the one that came with the lights and has a little green LED when turned on but I'm sure it hasn't got a cut off. Perhaps the bulb route is the way
to go, I think I read on here about some bulb upgrades... I best have a look for it....
Thanks

lego

Ok, I changed the bulbs and they still seemed as dim as before so i was thinking of making up some battery packs which got me thinking- how much you can over volt 6V mr 11 bulb's before reliabilaty becomes a problem?