Scored a lightly used Streamlight Litebox rechargeable spotlight. Couple questions-

[corneileous]

I know all about these flashlights and they are amazing. Back when I served as a volunteer firefighter years and years ago, we had these lights installed on every fire truck and never thought I'd ever get my hands on one. Well, I got one from my wife's work that no one really knows where it came from and I don't think anybody ever used it or even had a use for such a light because the charging cable was nowhere to be found and of course, it probably hasn't been used in a very long time because the battery inside is dead so being that I'm assuming that since this is a lead-acid battery, is it most likely a goner from being dead for so long? Should I wait to condemn the battery until after I can get a charge cord for it to see if it even charges? I probably coulda just bought a charge cable for it on Amazon but since Streamlight sells charge cords, I'd just rather buy one from them. Besides, I'd like to make sure I get the right one.

 

[bluflaam777]

Lead acid car batteries can be restored, we did it in shop class in high school. But it's a process of 'shocking' the battery and using chemicals. It isn't hard but most don't have the correct charger and know how. It can be dangerous if you muck around.

However, I don't know how a flashlight battery compares...and if this one has been dead for 'years', I wouldn't try it.

 

[corneileous]

Lead acid car batteries can be restored, we did it in shop class in high school. But it's a process of 'shocking' the battery and using chemicals. It isn't hard but most don't have the correct charger and know how. It can be dangerous if you muck around.

However, I don't know how a flashlight battery compares...and if this one has been dead for 'years', I wouldn't try it.

Wouldn't try what, that stuff you talked about what you did in high school or just normally trying to charge this one once I get a charge cord?

As far as how this battery compares to a regular car battery, I have no idea. Here's a picture of it.

 

[bluflaam777]

Wouldn't try what, that stuff you talked about what you did in high school or just normally trying to charge this one once I get a charge cord?

As far as how this battery compares to a regular car battery, I have no idea. Here's a picture of it.

Either. I'm not familiar enough with those batteries to want to try. It could be a stick of dynamite or just a dead chunk of lead, you might be able to revive it. I wouldn't want to find out the hard way LOL

If you decide to get bravely curious, try it charging it outside away from anything you care about. It will create hydrogen and oxygen while charging. A spark, static, even excessive heat can make it go pop.
It might not do anything..it may just be that dead.

 

[ABTOMAT]

I've tried getting these batteries going again with everything from trickle chargers to frying them with great big car chargers and I've never had any luck. No safety issues either, but no luck. Best I've gotten is a dead battery becoming functional again but not holding a charge well. Considering how incredibly cheap these batteries are it's not really worth it. Off-brand one off Amazon is probably $15, same ones they use in alarm systems and UPSes.

But if this is an incandescent Litebox it's also without any real value, so consider where you want to put your money.

 

[Cyclops942]

I'd go to Batteries Plus, Batteries + Bulbs, or whatever the place is called in your area, and let them deal with the dead battery recycling and sell you a new one. For me, it wouldn't be worth the time and effort to revive the old battery, because it has already "died" once, and it will never do a proper job again.

However, if you relish the challenge, then knock yourself out, I guess. I can't help you with that, though; I've never done that.

 

[corneileous]

I've tried getting these batteries going again with everything from trickle chargers to frying them with great big car chargers and I've never had any luck. No safety issues either, but no luck. Best I've gotten is a dead battery becoming functional again but not holding a charge well. Considering how incredibly cheap these batteries are it's not really worth it. Off-brand one off Amazon is probably $15, same ones they use in alarm systems and UPSes.

But if this is an incandescent Litebox it's also without any real value, so consider where you want to put your money.

Yeah, I don't know, I might still try to charge it once I get a charger cable and if anything, I'll probably just buy a battery from streamlight's website just because I know that one should be a good battery. It's kinda hard to tell these days but some of the stuff you buy on Amazon.

But now, I know that LED technology is here loud and proud, but just because this is incandescent, why do you say it's without any real value? I looked them up on Amazon and they're still a little pricey and from what I remember, these are good lights and even though they are incandescent halogen, that 6 V battery would last pretty good while.

 

[corneileous]

I'd go to Batteries Plus, Batteries + Bulbs, or whatever the place is called in your area, and let them deal with the dead battery recycling and sell you a new one. For me, it wouldn't be worth the time and effort to revive the old battery, because it has already "died" once, and it will never do a proper job again.

However, if you relish the challenge, then knock yourself out, I guess. I can't help you with that, though; I've never done that.

That's probably what I'm gonna end up doing is just replacing the battery because I would think pretty much any rechargeable battery that's been drained that far down for as long as this one probably has, would probably not be any good anyways and being that I didn't realize that battery store you're talking about recycles batteries, The next time I go down to Sam's Club I'll probably stop by that store and just see how much their batteries are compared to the $50 one that streamlight has on their site. I also have an old ancient 12 V nicad Makita battery that I need to get rid of as well.

 

[ABTOMAT]

Asking prices on Amazon are pretty meaningless. Liteboxes that need batteries often go for $10 on eBay. You could spend money buying a battery and a charger and still have a relatively dim incan with a short battery life. If you're doing it for fun, sure, but as a user times have changed.

If you have a low-amp (like 2A, 4A, etc) car charger you could charge that battery for a couple hours and see if it works.

 

[corneileous]

Asking prices on Amazon are pretty meaningless. Liteboxes that need batteries often go for $10 on eBay. You could spend money buying a battery and a charger and still have a relatively dim incan with a short battery life. If you're doing it for fun, sure, but as a user times have changed.

If you have a low-amp (like 2A, 4A, etc) car charger you could charge that battery for a couple hours and see if it works.

All those I used back in my firefighting days never gave us any problems and they got used maybe anywhere from once or twice a week to five times a week depending on what time of the year it was and just whatever was going on and they all stayed on their charging cradles the whole time when not being used. I was on that department for about seven years and I don't recall any of them ever getting changed or having bad battery problems so perhaps is there another brand of light like this you're talking about?

But the only charger I have that might work for that is one of the chargers for my RC cars that's made to charge Lipo, LiHV, LiFe NiMH/NiCd and Pb batteries which, I just found out that Pb stands for lead-acid batteries, with a maximum charge rate of 60W, 0.1-6A and 6 to 12v on Pb's but wouldn't I just be better to get the charge cord for this and let its own charging station attempt to charge the battery? I may just end up having to call streamlight and ask them if the one wall outlet charger they sell is the right charging cord for this flashlight and if it is, I found one on Amazon for like 10 bucks. I just wanna make sure it's the right one because the charging cradle lists what cords to use and that one I was talking about was not one of them. Only two of the charge cords that the cradle says will work that streamlight has on their site are two different direct wire cords like if you were wiring this to go into a vehicle.

 

[ABTOMAT]

I mean the runtime, not the overall battery life. Streamlight discontinued these when they were no longer competitive on the market. You can get an official LED upgrade head but they're also kinda expensive for what you get.

The standard Streamlight 22311 charger is correct for these. Make sure you're getting a Streamlight brand, not a knockoff. But it's a very weak trickle charger designed to keep the battery topped off. If you have a flat battery that hasn't been charged in years it may not be enough to get it going.

Here's the original info sheet: https://web.archive.org/web/2008120...ight.com/documents/info-sheet/litebox_sup.pdf

 

[corneileous]

Well guys, I just went ahead and followed the instructions of the customer service rep from streamlight and went on over to BrightGuy.com to order my new battery and charge cord so whenever that comes in, I'll update if everything works great. Thanks for all the help.

 

[corneileous]

I mean the runtime, not the overall battery life. Streamlight discontinued these when they were no longer competitive on the market. You can get an official LED upgrade head but they're also kinda expensive for what you get.

Well, from what it sounds like, they just discontinued the one that I have and went to an updated model that's LED that still practically is just like this light and even though like back when I had my original halogen magcharger flashlight from Maglite, I did buy this very expensive LED upgrade for that but that flashlight got used for a lot more occasions. This thing, being that it's just practically a cordless spotlight, probably won't get used a whole lot and really the only reason why I even have it is because I got it for free and who knows, it might actually get used a lot more than I predict it will.

The standard Streamlight 22311 charger is correct for these. Make sure you're getting a Streamlight brand, not a knockoff. But it's a very weak trickle charger designed to keep the battery topped off. If you have a flat battery that hasn't been charged in years it may not be enough to get it going.

Yeah, being that streamlight is a very well reputable brand, I already went ahead and decided to just go with their brand of charger and battery but apparently they don't sell that 22311 charge cord anymore, you have to get the 22060.

Here's the original info sheet: https://web.archive.org/web/2008120...ight.com/documents/info-sheet/litebox_sup.pdf

Nice. Now I'll have to take the bulb out just to see which one it is, if it's the 8 watt or the 20 watt bulb. But I do know that it's a spot because the lens is clear and you can clearly see the bulb inside.

 

[corneileous]

Well, very carefully for just grins and giggles last night, being that my little battery charger for my RC cars will charge all sorts of different battery types including lead acid batteries from 6 to 12 V, I decided to rig me up a little wiring harness to see if I could even charge that battery just a little bit to see if the bulb was still good; which I did find out is only the 8 W bulb and not the 20 W bulb but anyways, after I set the charger up to charge at one and a half amps and 6 V and then pressed the start button, The charger immediately said on its digital display that the connection was broken so, I'm assuming that means the battery is just dead as a door nail being that it's not even registering to the charger?

 

[ABTOMAT]

"Smart" chargers are sometimes too smart. A dead battery can look like an open circuit to a computer. Manual chargers don't care and will charge regardless of what you connect them to. Doesn't guarantee it'll work but sometimes you just need to get a dead battery charged enough for the smart chargers to recognize it.

 

[corneileous]

"Smart" chargers are sometimes too smart. A dead battery can look like an open circuit to a computer. Manual chargers don't care and will charge regardless of what you connect them to. Doesn't guarantee it'll work but sometimes you just need to get a dead battery charged enough for the smart chargers to recognize it.

Well, maybe that was the case kinda like how with the trick you can do thst I've seen where if you have a power tool battery that you drained just a little too much to where the charger won't recognize it, how you can take another battery and essentially jumpstart the dead battery just enough so that the charger will see it and start charging it but anywho, I j only tried it because I just wanted to see if I could breathe a little bit of life into this battery so, it's cool. That brightguy place got on the ball with shipping and my new battery and charge cable should be here by Friday.

 

[ABTOMAT]

Did you ever see weird things happen to the plastic on these when you were a firefighter? I've repaired eight Liteboxes this year and maybe a third of them had deteriorated to the point the plastic broke like potato chips. Couple of them were less than 10 years old.

 

[corneileous]

Did you ever see weird things happen to the plastic on these when you were a firefighter? I've repaired eight Liteboxes this year and maybe a third of them had deteriorated to the point the plastic broke like potato chips. Couple of them were less than 10 years old.

No, and I was on the same department for close to 7 years and we never had to mess with these lights. They all worked perfectly and stayed on their charger cradles that was mounted in all the trucks. Now, come to think of it, we might've had one or two that didn't seem to hold a charge as long as the rest of them but that was it.

But you're talking about the outer plastic shell that deteriorated, right?

But like I said earlier, I have no idea how old this light is because Streamlight says giving them the serial number doesn't help…. I wish I knew when it was that they stopped making the incandescent Liteboxes and moved to making the LED versions, that would kind of help determine age but either way, this one I have looks freakin' brand new and never used. Even the lens is completely scratch-free. I did, however, find out that it only has the 8-watt bulb, though. Still should be pretty bright at what, isn't the 8W bulb 8,000 lumen? Thought that brochure that somebody posted said the 20W bulb is like 20,000 lumen….lol.

But not to change the subject too much but do you know if the bulbs are interchangeable? Whenever this bulb eventually burns out, I'd kinda like to replace it with the 20 watt'er but only if it's ok to do so.

 

[ABTOMAT]

They kept the ican Litebox in the catalog forever, long after the LED versions were available. I think it was actually discontinued in 2017. Yours might have a molding date on it somewhere, but I don't know enough about modern Liteboxes to date it just by appearance. They were all pretty similar from around 1986 to the end. The original Litebox from 1980-1986 is a different beast. By the way here's a full service manual: https://www.manualslib.com/manual/1323527/Streamlight-Litebox.html?page=1#manual

Streamlight used to rate the bulbs in candela, not lumens. Specs:

 

[corneileous]

They kept the ican Litebox in the catalog forever, long after the LED versions were available. I think it was actually discontinued in 2017. Yours might have a molding date on it somewhere, but I don't know enough about modern Liteboxes to date it just by appearance. They were all pretty similar from around 1986 to the end. The original Litebox from 1980-1986 is a different beast. By the way here's a full service manual: https://www.manualslib.com/manual/1323527/Streamlight-Litebox.html?page=1#manual

Streamlight used to rate the bulbs in candela, not lumens. Specs:

View attachment 71388

Thanks for the service manual link.

Well, got my battery and charger in today and the light works. Only took like barely 15 minutes to charge once I got it put back together, plugged in the charge cable and locked the light on the cradle. I'm assuming that since this is a lead acid car-like type battery, it came pre-charged?

But anywho, being that this light has the 8-watt bulb and is not bright at all to what I remember, I'm assuming the Liteboxes I said I used back in my years of fire service were what, the 20-watt bulb? Which, I did find out anyways that according to the label on the spot lens, I can use either wattage bulb so is it safe to assume that just because the light obviously came with the 8-watt bulb that I can upgrade that to the 20-watt bulb to get a little more light output out of this thing? I'd really like a LED upgrade better, though.