Lithium C Primaries in 2C Mag

Hi all - I'm a noob, and am looking for a little advice.

I have put 2 3V C cell lithium primaries in my 2C Mag. Since this now gives me 6V, I replaced the bulb with a Maglite Xenon 4C bulb (LMSA401). This is before I found all the available info, like the mod of making the sleeve to hold 3 123s, and putting that in a 2C.

Is my mod sound decent, or was it kinda dumb, since the lithium C cell primaries are kinda expensive? Is my setup with the 4C Xenon bulb going to eat the batteries fairly quickly?

This is for flashlights to keep in the cars for emergencies, so I just want simple mods to give me bright, but not crazy bright (no melting parts and all that), and I want good runtime, without spending too much. I have UCL lenses on the way to me now, by the way.

Would the 3X123s in the 2C body be smarter? I realize this would give me 9V, and could therefore use a brighter lamp, I guess, but again I don't want to plow through batteries. By the way, I do want to stick to primaries.

The way I have it now, with the C cell lithiums, would an LED drop-in, like the TerraLux TLE-6EX be a smarter choice with respect to battery life? I think the brightness would be about the same as the 4C Xenon bulb I'm running now, but I could be mistaken about that. I'm also aware that I could overdrive a 3C bulb, for greater brightness, but don't want to blow a bulb too quickly. Would overdriving a 3C bulb use more battery power than using the proper 4C bulb?

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated!

Hi headmotty,

3V C lithium primaries sounds interesting. I actually didn,t know these exist. Do you have a link with information about them?
I have a Maglite 2C in which I use 3xCR123 cells. But instead of an incan bulb I use a Malkoff 4-6C LED dropin. LINK. I tried to use a standard crypton bulb for Maglite 6cell, but the Malkoff dropin was brighter.
Malkoff is more expensive than Terralux, but the brightness is higher. Also Terralux lacks of efficient heatsinking and the brightness will drop significantly when running continuously.

Regards, Patric

Patric,

Thanks for the info you provided on your light. I looked at the Malkoff drop-ins, but they are more than I really can justify spending on this. Must be nice and bright though!

The 3V lithium Cs can be found here http://www.zbattery.com/Panasonic-3V-C-Cell-Lithium-Battery but lithiums can't be sent by air, so you would have to find a supplier in Sweden. They don't seem to be very well-known. I wonder if anyone else is using them?

The price being $23 for 2 of them, I guess it would make more sense for me to do the 3X CR123 mod and then run a 6C Xenon bulb or equivalent (or overdrive a 5C), if I wanted to stay with incandescent.

. . .

Thanks headmotty for the info.

I have heard about air-shipping restrictions of lithiums before. But I think that is the case for bringing them with you when travelling. Several times I have ordered lithium CR123 batteries from USA to Sweden and they arrived within 2 weeks. By air or boat I don't know, but I have received them.

These 3V C lithiums are expensive but impressing, they contains more energy than the best D cells NiMh, and would provide more than twice the runtime in my 2C than 3x CR123 cells! But I count out that the price tag is so high, it will be more than twice the cost than using my CR123 cells for the same runtime.

Regards, Patric

Patric - yeah, I realize now that the CR123 modification would be cheaper, use more easily available batteries, and yield more light at the same time. I just thought of using lithiums over alkalines for their desirable qualities, and just substitued C cell for C cell, not even knowing about the CR123 option. I think I'll give the 3X CR123 modification a try. Your feedback has been really helpful to me, as a complete newcomer to this. Thanks so much!:twothumbs

And in contrast, ElectronGuru, your "..." wasn't really helpful much at all.

headmotty said:

And in contrast, ElectronGuru, your "..." wasn't really helpful much at all.

Click to expand...

Yea, mispost. My mind (and reply) was on a different thread.

headmotty said:

Patric - yeah, I realize now that the CR123 modification would be cheaper, use more easily available batteries, and yield more light at the same time. I just thought of using lithiums over alkalines for their desirable qualities, and just substitued C cell for C cell, not even knowing about the CR123 option. I think I'll give the 3X CR123 modification a try. Your feedback has been really helpful to me, as a complete newcomer to this. Thanks so much!:twothumbs

Click to expand...

I am glad to have been to any help!

If it's of interest the inspiration to my 2C Mag/3xCR123 light was this part from youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSYZxBNhIN0

In this movie the guy uses a Keep2Go Travel Tube for an adapter, which I earlier already had ordered from Fenixstore! So I then just ordered a Maglite 2C and the 4-6C dropin from Malkoff.
I am still a bit interested in getting the Malkoff P7 dropin for C Maglite, which could replace the 4-6 dropin. Much brighter, but of course with much shorter runtime too, likely a bit shorter than an hour. And because I think that the runtime of a light shall be at least an hour I thought that the present Malkoff dropin with ~3 hours runtime is good.
And I already have a Malkoff P7 placed in a Maglite 3D using 6V NiMh battery so my need of it isn't acute...

Edited: Here are two pictures of my modding:
[URL=http://img34.imageshack.us/i/maglite2ccr123mod.jpg/][/URL]


Regards, Patric

Hello headmotty,

Unfortunately, the concept of "lithium" in battery tech is often misunderstood. In reality, while lithium is used in the construction of many types of cells out there as part of the electrolyte, the actual specific materials used in conjunction with it to form the anode/cathode/separators/etc can vary widely. Each combination has it's own benefits and drawbacks.

The CR123 photo-lithium cells we have become accustomed to, have inadvertently caused many adventurous consumers to make a leap in assumptions that lithium is lithium when it comes to these cells.

A CR123 that can handle high drain consumer devices is more specifically a lithium manganese dioxide cell. The cell you have linked to is a Poly-Carbonmonoflouride Lithium chemistry and is probably not designed for the application you are using it in.

The manufacture recommended continuous load on the cell you have linked to is 5mA. As for the maximum load allowable... I'm not 100% sure but there is a graph suggesting a load upwards of ~300-400mA through testing in the data-sheet (comparing the effects of temperature on voltage maintenance).... Another graph limits information at 100mA.....

Regardless, before you use those cells in that flashlight any more, I think it would be prudent to do further research and determine if it is even safe to do so. Most large lithium chemistry cells sold in that fashion are designed for installations in low-drain situations like memory backup or clocks and stuff.

Many types of lithium chemistry cells can be very dangerous if abused. Do some due diligence here and cover yourself.

-Eric

Why not 2x 26500 IMR "C" cells + a Maglite 6D Xenon bulb?

Outdoors Fanatic: that's basically a "ROP-extra-LO" and one of the reasons I love the ROP format.

Also, don't be so hard on the new guy. Quoting ZBattery's definition for so-called "truth":

Lithium - The non-rechargeable type. Very high energy density, 10 year shelf life, ideal for high drain devices because of its quick recovery, safely disposable in the garbage, fairly expensive compared to alkalines. Nearly twice the life of an alkaline in most applications, best in cold weather.

Click to expand...

Headmotty: If I were you, I'd grab a Nite Ize "universal" LED drop-in, and put that in the Mag with the lithium batteries, and proceed to ignore it until the next hurricane hit and power was out for weeks. The Nite Ize dropins are very dim, but run forever. That means very low drain. I don't actually know how low 'low' is in this case, but it's way safer than a high-output incandescent.

I would be worried with a C or a CR123 powered torch as my emergency, vehicle back-up.
**I like the AA Lithium primaries from Energizer. They are my choice for temp-abuse taking, long term, reliable storage (this lithium is different from the lithiums you are referring to)
**it must be LED. Incan might shatter if it rolls off a roof or hood.
**must be AA. Imagine you are in the middle of nowhere, and a passing car or isolated house offers you the spare batts rolling around a drawer or glove compartment. It is way more likely it will be AA than other sizes.
**M@g is good choice: good stepped on, junk piled on, abuse taking, reliable tool
so, my choice is a 2xAA LED minim@g . Note that this is way different from the torches used elsewhere.