Originally Posted by
datlas
I have had the Magicshine Headlight (not the torch but the headlight) for several months and I love it. I can't say enough good things about it. However, I had a little scare tonight on my commute home...
My ride is approx 40 minutes each way. Light worked fine on the way in, was fully charged from about 1 week ago. About 10 minutes into my ride home, the green button went red...and about 10 minutes later the light went totally dark. On an unlit, dark road.
Fortunately I have a backup light (a fenix L2D CE Q5, the "it" light of 2008) so I was able to limp home safely. But it was unnerving.
My understanding is that the MS light is supposed to have 3-4 hours of burn time, but clearly today it lasted less than an hour. I should add that although I like the light, I have not used it a ton and the battery has probably been through "only" about 15 charge cycles.
Any thoughts or suggestions?? I suppose I should charge up the battery and run the light again to see if it only lasts 1 hour again, or if today was maybe a fluke?
Doug
edit: I doubt this matters, but the temps today were approx 40F. Cool but not that bad.
There are two issues here. One is to not depend on a light that has been charged a week ago. Charge them more often and know how long your lights will run. Lithium does not like to be deep cycled. You can even damage the battery if you cycle them too deeply. They should have protection circuits to keep this from happening but if you go too deep the protection circuit will disable the battery completely. If the charge gets too low, you'll end up going into cell reversal and reduction of the lithium ion to lithium metal. That is very bad, hence the protection circuit.
The other issue is redundancy. Over long years of night riding, I've learned not to depend on a single light source. I run 3 lamps and have had occasion to need all three. A recent crash took out the two handle bar lights and did a number on the helmet light. At least it got me home. You at least had a back up but a better choice would be to run a second light system. You'll have more light and you'll won't be limping home.