Magicshine charging question.

ince
ince Posts: 289
edited October 2011 in The workshop
I have one of the early MJ-808 900 lumen Magicshine lights; the one with the dodgey battery. Upuntill yesterday I have no issues with either the head-unit or the battery, the only weak spot I have found was the connection between the different components. The wire had started to break up either side of the plug.

Yesterday I replaced the plugs with a dual-pin XT60 conectors, all soldered up and checked that all the + and - were the same as the original plugs. When I fitted the battry wires I stripped and attached one at a time to ensure there was no chance of a short.

Now when I plug the battery into the charger the LED indicator either stays green, or as I had happen once will alternate every four or five seconds between red and green. When I attach the battery to the light, the light will come on for a second or two then die with the indicator on the back of the light unit very faint.

I have used the light through the last two winters, rain and snow and not had any issues. The battery did get wet on the Friday morning in the pleasent weather we had, is this more likely to have stuffed the battery? Or could changing the conectors have caused the problem? I am sure I did not wire any of the connections back to front but would this cause an issue if you did?

Comments

  • redjeepǃ
    redjeepǃ Posts: 531
    It could have been the rain, but I'd look to see if any of your solder joints are bad. I'm not sure how much experience you have with a soldering iron, but you can get what's called dry joints if the solder doesn't 'stick' correctly.

    This would cause high resistance joints which could cause the problem you mention. Take a look at the joints, and 'stress test' them a bit by wiggling them, even if they don't fail I'd be tempted to redo them. Make sure that both the wire and the connector are as clean as possible, use some fine sandpaper to clean up the connector before you resolder it. Make sure that the solder sticks flows onto the connector, (it shouldn't look like a raindrop on a waxed car).