cat eye

Hi guys
I'm looking to upgrade the battery on my cateye bike lights
it's using a 6v lead acid at the moment
looking for something a bit lighter and more duration
any ideas/help would be great
the lights are CATEYE HL-RC230
cheers
Stu

You mean your old light is the cateye?

Fenix LD25's do a good job on bicycles, 180 lumens for over 1.5 hours and they have a nice neutral white colour for outdoors. Currently I use 1 x LD25 plus 1 x Quark AA2 Turbo. But there are plenty of choices that would be suitable. You can also get pretty bright li-ion bike lights from deal extreme that seem to go ok too.

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/member.php?171365-stuupnorthstuupnorth said "I'm looking to upgrade the battery on my cateye bike lights"

I think he/she means a new battery is needed...

For a 6v halogen set up like the old cateye I would imagine the following options:

2 X lithium 18650 in series (or 4 in 2S-2P) to give 7.4V

5 or 6 X NiMH AA in series to give 6V or 7.2V respectively.

The 6 X NiMH AA would be very easy as 6XAA battery holders are dirt cheap and readily available. As are 6XNiMH battery chargers.

I seem to recall that overvolting the HS-3 halogen bulb works OK. I can't recall if the Cateye HL-RC230 uses the HS-3 or if it's an MR-11 style globe. I used to overvolt my Cateye Daylites without any problems using 6XAA NiMH.

Sam.

Sorry, yes you're right..

stuupnorth said:

Hi guys
looking for something a bit lighter and more duration
the lights are CATEYE HL-RC230
Stu

Click to expand...

Looking at the product spec it says it can run 2-10W 6v lights for 1 hour. That translates to about a 3.3 AH capacity if I calculated correctly. NiMH C cells are around 5 AH, D cells 10 AH. Either would likely be lighter and increase duration. How much more duration you need is the question. D cells would triple what you have now.

If you are satisfied with the light output I would probably go with 5 cells, over volting the bulbs can shorten their life. They may already be over volted 4.8 v bulbs, not sure about this light but I have a NiteRider that does this. If you want more light go to 6 cells.

Tabbed cells are easy to build into battery packs. An appropriate diameter PVC pipe and end caps is easy to make a battery holder that you can strap to your top tube.