Electronics, Lighting, & Gadgets - standard-battery powered light

I'm tired of replacing expensive battery packs: my current $80 li-ion water bottle battery, while light & powerful, only lasted 100 cycles before blowing a cell. it's 6 mo old so no warranty... and whne it blew, i was 2 miles into my 6 mile DARK, RAINY commute! gar.

I want a powerful light that runs off standard aa or c cells. easily relpaceable, charging in standard chargers, alkaline backups if push comes to crunch...

The only such system I'm currently aware of is the Dinotte series. Are there others?

I'd be open to a bar-mounted flashlight but the powerful ones (5w+) seem to have short runtime.

fwiw, i have an elderly NiteHawk housing a 20w bulb overvolted to 14.8V with the batterspace li-ion pack. GReat setup while it lasted...

I might post this in the Commuting section as well.

Thanks!!

I use a 20watt halogen nitehawk or nitesomething? and use a 13.2 Nimh battery pack from batteryspace.com. I use the 4.2 AHr pack gives you about 3+ hrs of light and just wrap it in a rag and put it in the bottle holder. You'd spend a fortune if you use non-rechargeable batteries for lights of any real power. I just know I get a bit more respect from cagers at night when i use the 20 watts plus see a lot more.

You might want to consider the Sigma Sport Ellipsoid (no longer in production) or its replacement, the Cubelight. For extra light than that put out by the 2.4 W halogen, get either a 6W halogen bulb, or maybe even a 10W one at the cost of reduced run time (if you can find them, bulbs are hard to find for sale these days). Alternatively, do what I'm doing and replace the bulb with a Maglite 5 cell Magnum Star (it's supposed to be significantly better than the cheaper Krypton star). The light is then plenty to see the road by.

Just wondering, but does anyone know of a 6 or more AA cell light? I think there may be opportunities for some very good mods for those.

http://www.princetontec.com/products/index.php?id=40&type=0&use=4