No fuse in battery charger for 8.4v bike light battery?

[Mr Evil]

I do want a decent version of this but it's a weird voltage and seems specific to bike light battery packs. It's easy to find adapters with several fittings that plug into just about anything with 3V/6V/9V settings but no 8.4v setting. Trust me if there was a £9.99 plug that had Japanese internals I'd be buying it in a flash. This China plug cost something like £1.99 delivered.

8.4V is the normal voltage for charging 2S (two in series) lithium ion batteries, being twice the voltage of a single fully charged cell. You propbably want to search for something like "2S li-ion battery charger", and you should find plenty of them spanning the whole range of quality and price. Almost all of them will still be at least partly made in China, but the best Chinese stuff is just as good as western-made stuff.

Still, as hamster said, the one you have looks ok. It appears to have at least been designed to not kill anyone. I would keep using it myself.

[Manc33]

Biscuit tin demoted.

[pwa]

Would it not be better to just pay more and get electronic stuff that does not require dismantling to check for safety?

I do want a decent version of this but it's a weird voltage and seems specific to bike light battery packs. It's easy to find adapters with several fittings that plug into just about anything with 3V/6V/9V settings but no 8.4v setting. Trust me if there was a £9.99 plug that had Japanese internals I'd be buying it in a flash. This China plug cost something like £1.99 delivered.

As I was reading posts on this thread I had the TV on in the background and there was a programme about fake (counterfeit) electronic goods from China that carry CE marks that mean nothing and have very basic internals that lack safety features. It seems to me that you may be buying light packs that are made to that low standard, without care for your safety.

[Manc33]

There's only one place in the world I trust sells genuine 18650 batteries online and that's nkon.nl in the Netherlands. They don't sell these 8.4v packs. I don't know anywhere that does apart from China and eBay. From past experience, eBay is actually worse than China for this sort of thing. At least China charges you cheap amounts for fake stuff and it's usually not got the actual brand name on it... on eBay often the prices are only 10% less and they are claiming the item is genuine when it's a fake WITH the brand name of the genuine item. China doesn't do that with batteries, they will sell cheap batteries that have silly names like "UltraFire" and "TrustFire" (the joke with those is 'you can trust there will be a fire') but on eBay they do try to pass it off as the real thing, when it's not.

Don't even get me started on things like carbon Selle SMP saddles on eBay. Fakes of those go for under £30 in China and they are actually well made and quite chunky, but I have seen sellers on eBay receiving well over £100 for used ones, passing them off as genuine. Come on, the genuine one costs an arm and a leg, over £400! You know they're not genuine because the fakes have got lumpy molding around the back of the rails, it's a saddle worth £30. Real ones are very neat with a strip of carbon wrapped around the rails, but I digress.

Where are we meant to get good quality 8.4v waterproof battery packs from and... are those packs even going to be legit anyway? They are probably just the exact same packs DX.com sells (which is where I got mine from and have ran fine for 2 or 3 years now) but they will be 3 times more expensive than DX with a load of sales nonsense attached about how they are high quality blah blah blah.

Typically a good 18650 that's (supposedly) genuine like LG, Samsung or Sony costs at least £5, a bit more for a Sony like at least £6, multiplied by 4 for a 8.4v pack would cost at least £20 but yes these China packs are ludicrously cheap in some cases, like under £8. IIRC my DX packs weren't at a rock bottom price, they aren't low quality cells though, I can tell that from how long they power my light, taking ages to charge etc. It is hit and miss buying the cheapest you can find, from some random place. Places like DX and FastTech, I think can probably be trusted and they are about as cheap as you're going to find these items, without having to buy from some dodgy place that hardly ever sells anything to anyone like some of the sellers on AliExpress.

[tim-b]

Hi

Where are we meant to get good quality 8.4v waterproof battery packs from

Two sources that spring to mind...
MTB batteries in the W Mids (link) I have personal experience of products from Mark, excellent.
Torchy (link) No personal experience but a good reputation.
Nobody is immune from Li-Ion battery problems, regardless of budget, experience and engineering know-how (link)
Regards
tim-b

[hamster]

Because people can't read simple instructions and fit the wires into the correct holes.

It was fine back in the day when red was live, and Red went to the Right when wiring the plug. Then they came up with Brown for live, with the little rhyme "brown is hot, blue is not".

Except for colour blind people who could not distinguish between red and green.

[nigelnightmare]

Because people can't read simple instructions and fit the wires into the correct holes.

It was fine back in the day when red was live, and Red went to the Right when wiring the plug. Then they came up with Brown for live, with the little rhyme "brown is hot, blue is not".

Except for colour blind people who could not distinguish between red and green.

I always remembered it by bRown=Right & bLue=Left.

[Manc33]

Cheers tim-b it's appreciated.

"Batteries labelled as 8.4V are incorrectly labelled, This is the full charge Voltage of the battery and should read 7.5V - They are both the same battery"

No wonder I can never find any if some places call them 8.4v and some call them 7.5v.

It's like that bit in Pulp Fiction but instead of a magic marker its "Get me a four pack of cells". You know a square tall thing with round corners, a f****** rechargeable battery pack!

EDIT: Surely it can't cost "£44 + Shipping" for one four pack!

I thought they would cost a bit more from the UK but that's three times more than ones are from DX.com.

It's hard finding ones on DX that ship to the UK. 5 years ago that wasn't a problem but it is now.

I can only find one pack (that's black as opposed to red) that ships here and you've got to have a 6-pack...

Code: Select all

https://www.dx.com/p/aibber-tone-power-8-4v-8800mah-waterproof-6x18650-battery-pack-with-charger-for-cree-bike-lamp-headlight-2021501.html

Soon there will probably be no options at all for any pack to be delivered to the UK on that particular site, since it's now down to one solitary pack on there, unless the law changes. We're going backwards.

Are you sitting down?

Code: Select all

https://www.fasttech.com/products/1603/10059925/9685981

That one is £7.64 shipped to the UK! A higher capacity variant is available at £9.68 shipped. It does say "circuit protection" in the title too.

Let's say shipping on the UK pack is £4, that makes it 6.85 times more expensive than the £7.64 FastTech pack.

I can't justify spending that much more!

[Mr Evil]

There's only one place in the world I trust sells genuine 18650 batteries online and that's nkon.nl in the Netherlands...

There are plenty of places that sell real 18650s. Last time I bought one it was from http://www.fenixtorch.co.uk/. I didn't buy direct from China since I wanted a high-capacity one, and those are the most likely to be fake. The one I got was supposed to be 3500mAh (about the largest that exists at the moment), and I measured the capacity to be quite close to that. From somewhere less reputable you might get a 3500mAh cell that measures 2500 if you're lucky, which is high enough that you might think it's real, but still a very long way from what was advertised.

...They don't sell these 8.4v packs. I don't know anywhere that does apart from China and eBay...

Plenty of sources for those too. I haven't kept many links to places that sell them since I don't buy them myself, but https://www.candb-seen.co.uk/ should be reliable.

...From past experience, eBay is actually worse than China for this sort of thing. At least China charges you cheap amounts for fake stuff and it's usually not got the actual brand name on it...

I'm assuming that by "China" you mean direct sales from China, since the cheap crap on eBay is all Chinese too. You certainly can get counterfeits from Chinese retailers too though; go to AliExpress and search for branded batteries, then check the reviews, especially for the lower rated ones.

From places like DX and AliExpress you pretty much have to check the reviews to see if the batteries are as advertised, while EU retailers will (hopefully) have done that for you. That means that any time a new battery comes up for sale, some people are going to have to take a gamble.

[jb]

A fuse's job is to protect the wiring behind it, not the equipment.

A three pin plug fuse is to stop your house wiring overheating which is the expensive bit, usually. If the circuit board fuse has blown a circuit board will generally have a fault on it already such as blown capacitor or tranformer

[hemo]

Fogstar wholesale is a UK seller selling genuine cells as are Wholesale 18650.UK.
Both much cheaper then Nkon, Fogstar get good reviews for CS on vape sites.

[Manc33]

Fogstar wholesale is a UK seller selling genuine cells as are Wholesale 18650.UK.
Both much cheaper then Nkon, Fogstar get good reviews for CS on vape sites.

Cheers yes theirs are cheap. I had some legit AW IMR used in an ecig and they typically lasted 2 days, then they faded and started lasting 1 day so I got some "Sony VTC6" from eBay at £7.50 a pop. They aren't real, they last 1 day from new like the fading AW IMR did. I can only guess their capacity is about half what it should be, at best. Got a couple from nkon.nl and they last about 2.5 days, at again about £7.50 each once shipping is included.

It's harder with bike light packs because they are a specific thing. Ideally I'd want Sony VTC6 packs but, apart from that costing way more I'd never know if they were legit or not.

Maybe I jumped the gun saying £44 is expensive for a 4 pack from the UK. If they are on a par with VTC6 batteries that's £24 for 4 cells, then the rubber casing/cable, then the store has to make a profit, but they have to be making about £15 on it when charging £44 and that's if they are putting the most expensive (VTC6) in them, which I doubt.

A lot of people say the Samsung 25R is a good one, after that the LG ones. Personally though I'd pay slightly more and go for the VTC5 or VTC6.