HELP!!!

[emann]

I just opened up my boy's cheap little Rayovac flashlight to change the batteries for him and to my horror one of the four batteries had a whitish corrosion all over it and had turned the once gold colored contacts black. This flashlight was used often and the batteries had not been sitting in it forever unused or anything like that. I am now paranoid that this might happen to my L4. How can I prevent this? These were Duracell 2A batteries and I do sometimes use Duracell 123's in my L4.

 

[Chris M.]

Don`t worry, Lithium batteries do not leak. Alkalinies and the old Zinc Carbons do because the chemical goo inside is corrosive to the steel can, however at least in my few years experience with lithium cells, the goo inside those is relatively harmless to the can. Either that or the cells are constructed in a way that eliminates the chance of corrosion. I`ve got stone dead Li cells sitting up by there which otherwise look good as new. Wouldn`t keep dead alkalines around long enough these days for them to leak cos I`ve seen the mess they make when left alone and forgotten all too often.

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif