Originally Posted by
ItsJustMe
Here's what my connector looks like now. FWIW, this doesn't bother me that much, I've never had a connector that lasted forever, and I've had to replace them all eventually, though 3 months is a little quick to fail. I'm not afraid of soldering though.
I think we all knew that the issue with the MagicShine would be the durability and quality. I probably didn't expect to have these problems this quickly, but in some ways, you get what you pay for.
In addition to the connector issue (and mine looked rather like yours before I replaced the connectors), I had a problem at the OTHER end of the cable. If you take the wrapper off the battery (mine was splitting, so I removed it), you will see the the end where the cable enters the battery pack is the "bottom" of the battery stack.
There is a circuit board that sits on the "top" of the battery pack (across the ends of the 4 batteries). The power cable runs up along the batteries and then the 2 wires emerge from the cable, go over the edge of the circuit board and are soldered to 2 pads on the top of the board.
Where these wires run over the edge of the circuit board, there is NO protection. Since the battery (and the circuit board) hang under the stem of my bicycle, this cable is along the top of the battery and it will get "smashed" between the battery and the stem.
What had happened in my battery pack was that the circuit board had driven clear through the insulation of the wires. Both the positive and negative wires were exposed. When I would ride over a bump, the battery will bang against the underside of the aluminum stem, producing a momentary short. The caused the light to "switch off". I could switch it back on again, until the damage became so large as to produce a permanent short.
The fix was pretty simple, just shorten the wire an inch or so, cutting of the exposed wire and resoldering the wires to the 2 pads. However, the prevention would have been quite easy: even a simple notch in the circuit board for the 2 wires to pass through would have prevented this problem entirely.
To prevent this from recurring, I'm planning to tape a couple of layers of inner tube to the top of the battery where it contacts the stem, and make sure that the rubber does NOT extend as far as the circuit board. This should prevent the circuit board from reaching the underside of the stem.
Perhaps when I get it finished, I'll post some pictures.