Sylvania LED Lantern Not Working After Charge Question

Hi all... I have 4 of those nice little Sylvania LED lanterns, but two seem not to work after recharging the AA batteries.

I have had them for about a year. We noticed while camping last summer that two of them just stopped working. It seems that after recharging the batteries the problem surfaces. Take the batteries out, put them into a working light and they work fine.

Oddly, the lights themselves work. By using a different set of batteries the 'bad' lights work fine... It's driving me nuts.

This past weekend I hung the troublesome pair up in the shop, fed batteries to them, then let them run for 8 hours or so. Recharged the batteries once and still they worked, but the 3rd recharge made them fail.

By connecting wires to the springs inside that battery tube, the lights work fine from the newly charged batteries. Put the battery holder into the light and it stops working. I don't even have to put the bottom cover on. (those covers are problematic, so I shortened the threaded part to avoid contact with the batteries as suggested elsewhere on CPF)

Batteries:
PowerX 2500 Mah (Nimh) (2 years old or so)
Imedion (LSD) (new)
Titanium (LSD) (new)

No matter which light I put the PowerX batteries in they work fine.

The only thing I can come up with is that after charging, the LSD batteries expand. This is because the battery holder is more difficult to push in.

I am hoping that someone else has seen this and figured out what is going on.

Thanks

This may or may not be your problem, but I had an experience where Kodak LSD NIMH failed to work in my AA battery holder for my Canon XTi camera. The batteries were fresh charged, but the camera did not work. I replaced the batteries with Sanyo LSD NIMH and all worked file.

Checking later, I found that the Kodak batteries were slightly fatter, and when snapped into the battery holder, the springs on the negative end of the holder were not able to properly push the battery against the positive contact. The battery was just too snug in the holder. I verified this using a multimeter.

There are articles in the forum about the slight differences in diameter of some of the battery brands, and this was one case where it did affect the operation of my camera.

It's kinda what I'm thinking too. Something with the batter holder. I know these little lanterns are really popular on this forum, so I figured there would be other folks that have experienced this too.