Will LED flashlights be damaged by battery leakage?

I notice when it is time to change the batteries in my flashlights, they are weak when I test them on my battery tester, yet the output from the LED was still pretty useful. Now, I know you flashaholics take care of your lights, but the general consumer seems to run batteries down quite a bit before changing and they use single use batteries more than rechargables.

My nice lights get Ni-Mh, but alkalines go in the cheap ones. So far no leakage, but I bet lots of LED flashlights get damaged by leaking batteries.

It depends on the light and how it's used. I have some single cell LED lights that I run the cells down pretty far in. On the other hand I had a 4xAA light that I had to be pretty careful with.

you would assume that if you let it sit with the acids from the battery for months, then it would corrode.

I had a Streamlight 4AA ProPoly Luxeon ruined by name brand alkalines that leaked into the head of the light. I forget what brand. I don't think the light sat unused for more than a month. Very sad. I probably should have contacted the battery manufacturer, but didn't.

Germ said:

I had a Streamlight 4AA ProPoly Luxeon ruined by name brand alkalines that leaked into the head of the light. I forget what brand. I don't think the light sat unused for more than a month. Very sad. I probably should have contacted the battery manufacturer, but didn't.

Click to expand...

I had a 2C Streamlight Twintask ruined by leaking Duracell's. Duracell sent a check to cover a new flashlight and the batteries.

BTW, this is like the 3rd time duracells leaked on my since 1991. Energizers or rechargeables have not leaked on me.

why should there be any difference in damage from leaked batts between incands ans Led lights?
:thinking:

how often have You had leakage? Or have heared of leakage from some person in Your surrounding? Or have read in here?
A number to consider in the purchase / use of a light?

to worry about this, is like wearing a life jacket all the time, because one has watched Titanic ...

yellow said:

why should there be any difference in damage from leaked batts between incands ans Led lights?
:thinking:

how often have You had leakage? Or have heared of leakage from some person in Your surrounding? Or have read in here?
A number to consider in the purchase / use of a light?

to worry about this, is like wearing a life jacket all the time, because one has watched Titanic ...

Click to expand...

Because LEDS last so long, and how long. I've read that people still have LEDS from the 70's that still work.

As far as leaking. I've had a few D Cell batteries leak in my flashlights. I think they were cheap batteries though. I can't remember.

Yes, any device can be damaged by the acid from a leaking battery, but batteries dont' just open the spigot as soon as they die.
In fact, it usually takes quite a while for a dead battery to bleed out, so a dead battery isn't the problem; time is.

If you typically use your batteries all the way to dead like I do, the key is to USE them all the way to dead and then change them out.
It's leaving a low-charge or dead battery in a light for months that's going to bite you in the end.

The only (ONLY, only, only) times I've ever opened up a device (flashlight or otherwise) and found an acid mess from a leaking battery is when I had left the device untouched and forgotten somewhere for (typically) more than a year.

So, use 'em up, and when they're dead, change 'em out.

Then one more leg of that strategy is to do what I do with "emergency" lights that I keep in a trunk or back of a closet; besides making sure that those batteries are way out date wise (5 years or more), what I do is keep the batteries in a sealed plastic storage container on top of which sits my empty flashlight and to which I've strapped the battery container and flashlight together with a couple wraps of electrical tape so they don't get separated.
That way, if I forget those lights for too long, the batteries only bleed out into a plastic sealed container, but if they're good when I need them, it only takes a few seconds to pop them into the light.
The other part of that same strategy is that I change out ALL my emergency batteries once each year, usually at Christmas because that's an easy to remember memory date. Then I use up the rotated-out batteries in things I use all the time.
This all sounds complicated, but it's not.

My nightstand light(4/5 A mag 85)had NI-MH batts in it and I used it a lot.One day I opened it up just to take a peak inside and one of the sanyo batts had leaked.I'm in the process of flushing the H@#&*ll out of it now.So it can happen any time.SO CK YOUR LIGHTS!