Originally Posted by Frankenbiker
Well, I put the Optronics driving lights on my bike this morning and rode over to the hardware store to get some more stuff. Two blocks from my house one of the light's retaining ring fell off and went rolling down the street on its own
. Fortunately there was little traffic since it was Sunday and I was able to retrieve it before it was run over. Anyway, I had been forewarned in a previous thread that the retaining ring could fall off, so it wasn't unexpected. However, these lights definitely need to have some type of small sheet metal screw put in to keep the ring in place, or perhaps some electrical tape around the perimeter. *sigh*
I thought about the screw thing myself .. placed on the bottom it would also provide for drainage of water that gets inside the housing. What I've found works well instead of electrical tape is Reflectix metallic duct tape. I just take a narrow 2" strip and wrap it around part of the junction between the retaining ring and the housing. Since it's shiny silver in color it blends in with the Optronics housing, and seems to take the heat just fine.
Originally Posted by comradehoser
question:
is it advisable to link up a parallel-wired set of D-batteries to a serially-wired set of AAs in order to increase the Ah without increasing voltage? My overvoltaged 35w bulb is eating up the AAs pretty fast, even though they're 2500 mAh.
also, on a lighter note, I was putzing around with the wiring and shorted 14.4v--the smell of seared finger is awesome.
Wow, that's going to be very tough on batteries. I'm running my (non-overvoltaged) 35W off a 5000mAh NiMH battery pack, and that's pushing the batteries about as hard as anyone should. I think even 5000mAh would be have a hard time handling an overvoltaged 35W very well.
My system is fully drained in just over an hour (which fortunately is just long enough for me). I've gotten away with that for a year so far, but if the battery pack doesn't make it though a second year I may step up to the next level in power. I think the next level in NiMH is 8000mAh or so ... in which case I'll probably step the bulb up to 50W too! More is better!