Replacement connectors for Magicshine?
 

Do any of you know of a convenient source of replace connectors for MagicShine lights?

The female connector on my battery has become intermittent, and I need to cut it off an replace it.

Are these connectors readily available (in electronics or automotive stores) or do they have to be special ordered?

I've seen some things mentioned in previous posts, but searching has not turned up any useful info.

Thanks

Buy an extension cable from Geoman. One each, male and female.

You could probably find a replacement that would work at a Radio Shack store, it would electrically work but it wouldn't be waterproof.

Our local Radioshack doesn't seem to carry anything suitable. The connector that comes from the factory doesn't look that waterproof in the first place. It wasn't the water that killed this one, it was plain old repetitive stress from being connected and disconnected.

You can order a female DC connector with bare leads for $2.95 from www.allbattery.com. http://www.all-battery.com/dcfemalec...bareleads.aspx

http://www.all-battery.com/ProductIm...-connector.jpg

You can also get a replacement LiION battery with a female DC connector from them much cheaper than the MS sources. Their's is $24.13 and it's an 8AH 7.4V battery. http://www.all-battery.com/li-ion186...connector.aspx

http://www.all-battery.com/ProductIm..._74V8800C2.jpg

Thanks for posting that! I was wondering what other battery options there were and didn't have much luck finding anything. I'll definitely try out one of the 8 pack. It would be great for extended operation on my commute.

There is something hinky with that pack. Eight cells for $24 is less than $3 per cell not including the PCB, labor etc - the cells themselves sell for $7. This pack is identical except for the leads and sells for $71. Might be just a typo or something wrong with the description. They seem to have several like that: a 2*2600 pack for $22, a 2S2P 2600 pack for $20 and another 2S2P 2200 for $35. Very odd unless I am missing something.

Not for nothing, but if you need more runtime, rather than a 2S4P ("8 cell") pack, I'd just get a second 2S2P. It lowers the risk of a mismatched cell in the pack acting up.

Mine seems pretty waterproof.

The strain is why I am very careful to ONLY grasp the connector part, and never apply any pressure to the wire itself. This is, of course, the proper way to take ANY connector apart - you should never pull on the wire.

If you noticed, the Tenergy pack with DC connectors is marked as a sale price. I suspect there aren't as many people who need packs with DC connectors, they aren't used on a lot of devices. Who knows whether all-battery will re-order packs with DC connectors once their present stock is depleted. Their specs are good. http://www.tenergybattery.com/index....mart&Itemid=27
I've put an order in for one to have as a back up. I think it will work fine. It's probably better than the no-name batteries in the MS packs.

They both are listed as "sale price". In fact there are only a few things listing a 'regular' price. Since Tenergy owns all-battery.com (see whois registration), they most likely order parts from the bat-cave and assemble the packs here.

I agree that Tenergy cells are a cut and a half above most no-name cells, but the detail descriptions dont actually say they use Tenergy cells (just 'high quality' ones), though I'd expect that to be the case. It might be that they over produced certain configurations and have lowered the price because of their time on the shelf, but THAT doesnt bode well either. You'd think if the packs had been on the shelf for 8-12 months they would feature them more to get them to move. Something just seems amiss with packs with the per-cell price at half the going rate of cheapos.

Given how sensitive Li-Ion us to voltage regulation, I'd get a charger for the 2S4P instead of trying to use the MS one.

It's too bad that their cheapest shipping is FedEx Ground. Not only is $11 for shipping for one of these pretty high (they could use a USPS priority flat rate box and ship a dozen of these for $6), FedEx Ground is one of the worst shippers in the US.

I was going to order one, but after seeing that I went to DealExtreme and ordered 4 18650 cells; I'll just build my own pack.

I ordered some things for Christmas presents and was able to take advantage of their Thanksgiving Holiday sale, which offered free shipping if you spent $75.00. Since this pack is double the capacity of the standard MS, I thought the price with FedEx shipping wasn't bad.

looks interesting. so this thing can just plug-and-play with the light and charger that came with the MS without any modifications?

Yes, it should be able to.

I dislike doing business with companies that inflate their shipping prices to hide the fact that they're undercutting on their prices. It's a dirty way to play price wars. On eBay you see the culmination of this.

I probably should get over myself and buy one of these packs anyway, as you're right, $36 is a pretty good price for this pack; it would cost about that much to buy the cells.

will the stock MS charger work with this battery pack? seems like this battery pack is 8 cells instead of 4 in the stock battery.

the 8cell battery pack from allbattery.com just arrived. charging it up now with the stock MS charger. battery pack plugs right into the lighthead and battery charger, but the connector isn't tight like the stock one, so probably not as waterproof"

I have one of those batteries and the label is dated 2006 so All-Battery is probably clearing out old inventory. They also are offering a $50 gift certificate to former customers who promote their Holiday Sales on public forums and provide links to their site. Chinese Spam.

Let us know how it works
Charge time
especially run time

Thanks

that's probably true, though mine has no date label. and i sure as heck did not receive a $50 gift certificate =[

it came charged pretty close to full, as i only had to plug it in an hour or two to top it off. not worried about the connector being not as tight as stock, but i don't have a pouch to attach it to my frame at the moment. for the riding i do, i've never had the stock battery pack run low during rides, including a few dark metrics. however, i ride mainly on the low setting, using high only to light up the river paths, etc, when needed.

The wire leading to the connector on my Magicshine battery has started to fail. I'm going to try to reinforce it, but given the care that I've taken to ONLY grasp and pull by the connectors and never by the wires, I have to believe that it's pretty important to modify the connectors such that the waterproofing collar doesn't grab as tight as it does from the factory.

I sanded mine down a bit, but I'm going to go even farther, I will try to make it so there's very little friction at all so I don't have to twist and strain to get the connectors apart.

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.

http://www.hauntedfrog.com/gallery2/...icture+001.jpg

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.