In the office - when I get here I plug in my bike lamp battery, a Magicshine 900 lumen Lightset (Magicshine MJ-808), to get ready for my commute, it being dark these days and I have a 14 mile ride home, so half way there or so I turn on the lamp. I go to get coffee and return to my office to this mighty stink, a quick search finds the Magicshine charging brick almost glowing, melting and smoking. So I drop power and wait until it cooled, and unplugged it. Sure enough the plastic underneath is all melted.

Dang.

I hope there is enough juice in the battery to get me home. I bought it October 30 last year so maybe the warranty still holds.

Anyone else had any problems with this charger? Thoughts?

Cheers - Lawrence

I have it and unless, I'm mistaken, the warranty is 90 days, but you can try. New batteries aren't too bad $50.

What worries me more than your warranty holding up is the potential that the block had to start a fire. Makes me wonder just how hot and how much damage could have been done before the breaker on that circuit would have tripped. Pretty scary. Hopefully the manufacturer will take a close look at the design and build process to make sure there aren't more of those out there that can do what yours did.

Sorry (but not surprised) to hear about your problem. It sounds like you are lucky your charger didn't actually cause a fire. This is the reason I'm willing to pay a little more for lights from established manufacturers who sell through retailers that have stores near where I live. I depend on at least one of my two headlights and two taillights working 100%of the time.

+1000

Report it to the manufacturer and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. https://www.cpsc.gov/talk.html

The manufacturer should replace your product since it obviously failed in an unsafe mannner that could have caused a fire and extensive property damage. Send photos of the melted unit to their legal department if you have to.

And it is not just the block that could have started a fire, Lithium-Ion has a reputation for burning like crazy. I fly R/C and use Lithium Polymer exclusively and they are kept in fireproof bags in an ammo can and only charged outdoors in same, I am very careful. So this wretched thing could have overcharged - or allowed an undercharge, who knows what it did - which means the batteries may be unstable. I don't know, I am unhappy with the whole setup. I wonder if I should leave early today to avoid the dark.

Blast blast and blast.

Buy cheap - get cheap.

Lawrence

Even if it was cheap it still has to be safe.

Look at all of the Sony/Dell laptop chargers that caught fire. They weren't cheap, but they had the same manufacturing defect. You're probably not the only person who's charger has melted.

Hmmm... I was very much considering a Magicshine; Can anyone comment on whether this is an isolated issue or representative of a pattern of 'little issues'? I hadn't seen anything here before to indicate hazards, other than some longevity issues...

If you got it from Geoman, they'll probably make it good for you.
I don't think this happens very much. I have two chargers for mine and have not had any trouble, and we certainly don't see tales of them melting very often.

That said, to really be safe you should always charge ANY LiIon system, from ANYONE, with someone around to observe it, or if that's not possible, in a fireproof situation like on a concrete or metal surface for both the battery and the charger. That goes for MagicShine, Lupine, Lights & Motion, or your Apple laptop.

The breaker is there to protect the building wiring and nothing else. Breakers come in all sizes and the wiring they feed should be sized to support the current the breaker will allow without melting either copper or plastic insulation. The breakers that feed office circuits could be almost any size, the ones at home are most commonly 15 or 20 Amp. A device you plug into the wall socket could start a fire with 1 Amp or even less. No breaker is going to prevent that. A circuit breaker has no idea how hot the load is getting, it only knows how much current is flowing to the load.

Ken

Very true.

The device itself however should be "fused" in some way, and since it is a battery charger, it should probably also have a simple thermal cut off...

Well, I am impressed, GeoManGear came through most impressively with an email telling me they have already shipped a replacement charger under warranty, it shipped today and as I probably won't commute by bike until next week this means I shall hopefully have the Magicshine lamp for next week - I confess I am much relieved. I was looking at DiNotte and other lamps and the prices have me shuddering! The Magicshine is very good value and with service like this then the value is increased manyfold in my opinion.

Thank you Magicshine.

Lawrence

Wallworts (your charger) are cheaply made magicshine probably has nothing to do with the manufacture of the charger. I had a motorola phone wallwort melt like that to so it can happen to any brand, remember a few years back when all those laptops were scorching peoples crotches????

This is example of why my next headlight will be an expensive bike-specific one. My P7 simply can't stay in one mode for more than 2 miles without switching or flickering, and that's with paper spacers and magnets to secure the battery. And, I've got one completely dead battery out of the two I bought with the light. The Magicshine system doesn't seem to be faring much better, at least by anecdotal evidence.

Until it burns the house down

Dynohub. For when your light absolutely, positively, must work every time.

That's not good. I wonder if there was a short? I built a small headphone amp last year and one day the 9v battery was shorted and it was burning hot in my pocket, and that was just a small battery. I'll have to take a look at the website for the specs of the battery and charger. I was all set to buy one until I read this.

It may reduce the chances, but ANY device that plugs into wall current can melt and catch fire, and ANY LiIon system can explode and burn violently, no matter how much money you pay for it. It's very rare for any manufacturer, but it can happen to any of them. You really should either not charge unattended or you should charge with the battery and the charger on a fireproof surface.

The main thing I don't like about dynohub is that it's not easily transferable from bike to bike.

If you have bikes that can take the same tire, then it's just a matter of having a lamp on each one; then you just drop the dyno wheel onto the bike you're riding. If not, then you have to swap tires.
The IQ Cyo is a cheap enough lamp that it's not unreasonable to have one on each of 3 bikes. That cost plus a dynowheel is equivalent to a high power, long runtime battery setup.

The biggest issue with the dyno (to me) is you need to have a battery backup like a mini-LED helmet lamp in case you have a breakdown or flat, since you can't use the dyno for that.

What sort of output does the IQ Cyo have? I've only been looking at headlamps in the 200-400 lumen range. Does the dynohub have any sort of noticeable drag? Your argument intrigues me, =)

They're 40 or 60 lux, depending on what you get. Lux is generally going to be a more useful measure than lumens, since it tells you how much useful brightness you're going to get. Lumens just tells you the raw output at the source. See here. A little bit of quick math suggests that the Cyo may be brighter than your 200-300 lumen lamps. There are a bunch of Youtube videos of the Lumotec IQ Cyo lights, if you want something to compare to.

When the light isn't turned on, Schmidt SON and Shimano Alfine hubs have an unnoticeable amount of drag during actual riding. When the light is turned on, the additional drag might be slightly noticeable depending on the conditions and your sensitivity, but isn't particularly significant. It mostly affects your top speed when fatigued and/or other negative affects are in play.

I have an Alfine hub, a Lumotec IQ Cyo R Senseo Plus (automatically turns on and off depending on light conditions, and has a capacitor to keep the light powered when not moving), and a Lumotec Toplight Line Plus. I love them, and hate it when I have to ride at night without them.

The IQ Cyo N is 60, while the R (nearfield illumination) is 40 lux because more of the light is going right in front of the bike. Good for dodgy commutes with crap lighting, but not so great for speedy riders who want a longer throw.
At full speed, you're actually seeing closer to 70 lux with the Cyo N models; which is close to the 80 to 85 lux that the Edelux pumps out.
Oddly enough, Supernova has given up on lux ratings in favour of lumens, claiming 305 lumens for the E3 Pro Terraflux (shaped), 370 for the E3 Pro Iris (symmetrical), and 800 lumens for the E3 Triple (symmetrical). I've seen all 3 compared to the Edelux and IQ Cyo N, and I was not impressed with the symmetrical lensed Supernova lamps. I'm actually sending mine for retrofitting with a new LED and Terraflux lens kit.

The only people I've met who can tell the difference are the really fast randonneurs who notice a difference in time spent on the road over the course of a 2 - 4 day event if they've had to leave their lamp on all day due to overcast/rainy conditions. I don't think most average people notice much more than the slight "hum" you can feel on a high speed downhill.

Occasionally I'll look at my bike computer and go "huh, I usually go a little faster than this for this amount of effort" when my lights are on. Maybe 0.5 to 1 mph difference. I suppose it could just be my imagination though.

At 30kph (18.75mph) there is about 7.5W of resistance with the lamp turned on, assuming a good dyno (3N71 or better). *Ref: Bicycle Quarterly, Vol 3, #4.

Per the Kreuzotter calculator, a 225 pound 6'6" rider at optimal weather conditions on flat ground riding hands on hoods and outputting 150W average will travel 15.2mph. At 142.5W (assuming 7.5W being used at the hub so only 142.5 available at the drivetrain) the same rider will travel 14.8mph.

So 0.5mph difference sounds about right.