Rebuilding a Niterider battery help.

"Wayne Pein" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Quoted message said:

My wife's Niterider has gotten to the point after about 5-6 years of not putting out much light
and not holding a charge long. It's a 15 watt lamp with a water bottle NiCad battery pack
comprising 5, 1.2 volt cells in series for a total of 6 volts. I carved open the water bottle
(yes, I now know I could have done it better, but it is still salvageable with some silicon or
something).

I'm thinking about cobbling together 6 C cells myself or having it done by an internet company in
order to overvolt it 20% to produce much more light. Yes, I know its at the expense of bulb life.

Would the charger that came with it still work? It says that its output is 7.25 volts and 550
milliamps.

I don't know how to do it myself. Just solder away?

Any thoughts and ideas would be great.

Thanks,

Wayne Pein Bicycling Matters [email hidden]

If you are interested in rebuilding your NiteRider 6V waterbottle battery. I posted this about a
year ago. I've been using the battery regularly since then and it still works great. Just don't
overcharge or completely discharge and it should have a long life.
------
I just did this a couple of weeks ago. I ordered an assembled 6V 5 D cell battery from
batterystation.combatterystation.comOpen ↗ . Assembled with Sanyo KR-4400 nicads with solder tabs. The batteries
are $5.00 each and you can have them assembled (wired and shrink wrapped) for and additional $5.00.
I had them assemble the battery in a modified style #33 as indicated on their site. Should cost you
less than $40.00 with transportation.

I found the best tool to disassemble the NiteRider waterbottle case was an old fashioned bottle
opener. First squeeze and kneed the bottle where the threads are to crack the glue (seems like hot
melt). Slide the flat end under the threaded seam and work it around to break the old glue. The
diagonal hashes you see on the bottle are actually threads. The seam is at top of the threads below
the ridge that runs around the bottle. Takes a little patience. Unscrew the top half. Cut the leads
close to the battery. Dig out the hardened foam around the batteries and remove from the base.
Support and wrap the new battery with some foam. Add a couple pieces of heat shrink. Solder the
leads together. Screw most of the way together. Add a bead of silicon seal around the top and
complete closure.

The BatteryStation is a small business and it took a couple of weeks. But the result was about $90
less than a new 6 Volt battery from NiteRider and should be good as new.

Bill Brannon

b REMOVE brannon AT OBVIOUS att DOT net

Wayne Pein said:

My wife's Niterider has gotten to the point after about 5-6 years of not putting out much light
and not holding a charge long. It's a 15 watt lamp with a water bottle NiCad battery pack
comprising 5, 1.2 volt cells in series for a total of 6 volts. I carved open the water bottle
(yes, I now know I could have done it better, but it is still salvageable with some silicon or
something).

I'm thinking about cobbling together 6 C cells myself or having it done by an internet company in
order to overvolt it 20% to produce much more light. Yes, I know its at the expense of bulb life.

Would the charger that came with it still work? It says that its output is 7.25 volts and 550
milliamps.

I don't know how to do it myself. Just solder away?

Have you seen users.rcn.combatteryrepair.htmOpen ↗ ? That guy seems pretty
smart. ;-)

About the charger: My bet (with absolutely no knowledge, of course) is that it's a simple wall wart
"dumb" charger. I'd guess that using a
7.25 volt source to charge a 7.2 volt battery pack would take a long time indeed.

I built a simple circuit to regulate a 12 volt wall wart down to something like 7 volts to charge a
6 volt lead acid battery. It would be easy to modify for your voltage. If you like, let me know and
I can probably find the circuit and send you a copy.

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