I think I screwed up

I have two Ultra Stingers and two regular Stingers all with dead batteries. I thougth I would be real smart and build my own battery pack when I saw sub c's on sale $65 for 24 units, 3300 mah NiMH at Batterysnchargers.

Now I have the batteries and see that they are about 1/8 of an inch longer than the individual batteries in the factory stick. Total length of the new batteries is 41 mm each.

I think I might be able to make them work in the Stingers, but 5 of them are about 1/2 inch too long in the Ultra Stinger.

I would sure appriciate any ideas that could make these batteries work.

Get some machinist to make you a cell extender?

Yes the best solution I have thought of so far is to have a short ring constructed that screws into the end of the flashlight with threads into which I can screw the end cap.

Any ideas on where I could find someone to do the job?

what about cutting a few coils off the tailcap spring?

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Now I have the batteries and see that they are about 1/8 of an inch longer than the individual batteries in the factory stick.


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Looks like the "buy another of the same model to use as material for the extender" idea might not be as cheap as I thought (although 1 "sacrificial" light might be able to make 2, or even 3, extenders).

This may sound like a stupid question, but do the sub-C cells you bought have "buttons" on them (like on the positive terminal of a retail battery)? If so, you may be able to remove the "button" stamping and use the cell as a flat-top. 1/8" sounds like the height of a "button".

Some years back, I had a problem with batteries that were a little too big (Gates Cyclon "D" SLA, modding a 6D lantern), and I was able to "shoehorn" them in by removing the outer case and plastic top, and making up 2 "sticks" of 3 cells each (using top and bottom terminals from cheap zinc-carbons for the ends of each "stick").

Dont feel too bad. There was another post where one of the battery companies did the same thing and shipped them to customers.

does the factory stick not have tips on the batteries? The stick may be tabless, and so it doesn't have nipples on the postive end...

This is for a Streamlight Ultra Stinger. There is no spring in the tail cap.

I will look again at the old batteries. They may not have had the buttons on them. How does one go about taking the buttons off of the new batteries without damaging them?

Buy another UltraStinger (I already have two) and using one of the old ones to construct the extensions out of might be possible. I hate to spend that much.

Does anyone know about how much I would cost to have someone make a pair of these extensions? If it is going to be the same or more than a new light, I guess that would get the new light. I think I am capable of cutting the threads myself. Though of course the inside threads will only be correctly cut on one extension (factory)

I have not been able to figure out how they attatch the head to the body. It doesn't unscrew.

Re.. button making too long... I had a similar problem recently trying to fit a battery into too small a space... the solution was brute-force.. I hit the battery really hard one something and smushed the positive button down.. it was only an AA or AAA battery can't remember when i did that or for what solution i needed to.. but it worked like a charm.. i think it was like an AAA mod where the head didn't seat right... so.. are the bats made with a 'button' or are they already flat-top?

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I will look again at the old batteries. They may not have had the buttons on them. How does one go about taking the buttons off of the new batteries without damaging them?


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This applies only if the new batteries have buttons, and is based on my experience in obtaining positive and negative terminals from "dollar store" batteries (for the mod I mentioned).

Remove the outer wrap (shink tubing, or seamed metal case - look at) from the battery. Inside, you'll find the "guts" of the battery, some cardboard and/or plastic electrical insulators, and one or two stamped chrome-plated discs. The stamped discs are the positive and negative terminals that show from the outside of the battery. Be aware that you may run into a polarity reversal (e.g. the centre terminal of the "guts" is negative, and the case of the "guts" is positive). Cut a piece of heatshrink tubing about 1/4" longer than the "guts", centre the "guts" in it so it'll protect both ends, and heat it (you don't want a "live" case). Add your connections to the "guts".

If you encounter a seamless can (a seamed case has no bottom on it, and the seam runs the length of the battery - don't confuse it with the crimp at the open end of a seamless can that holds the lid on - if one end of the can is continuous with the wall, you have a seamless can), STOP! - this is the housing of the "guts", and you don't want to open it. You might want to try practicing on a "dead" alkaline before working with a new NiMH.

The old ones do have buttons on them and the new ones I have are seamless.

The new batteries definetly have a button on the top. Just looking at it, I would say that taking the button off would not make them as short as the old batteries, but might be enough to squeez them into the flashlight.

I have an old Stinger that I would be willing to scrifice to make extension rings but I can't find any way to thread it.

I have found the very best solution for this problem. I took the whole thing to a person who used to be a machinist and he said that there looked like there was enough room in the tail cap to accomodate the larger batteries length, if one bored out the end cap to accomodate the new batteries width.

You see normally the batter stick sits on top of the tail cap. Once the tail cap was bored out to the dimension of the battery, the battery could sit down INSIDE the tail cap.

This gave me about 3/8 of an inch. The rest of the room I needed was taken up by the spring.

The biggest concern was can the tail cap be bored out enough to accomdate the battery and still have enough material left to hold the threads.

The second concern was would the bored out space provide enough room to allow the tail cap to be screwed down tight.

The answer to both of these questions was yes.

I had a friend who works with a machinist do the work. It took him less than 5 minutes to bore out the cap on a lathe.

The cap works great now. And if I want to go back to the old style battery stick, all I have to do is put somekind of a spacer in the tail cap to take up the extra space.

Also I did do a run time test on the new batteries. The old 1800 mAh stick was giving me about 55 minutes. The new 3300 mAh stick ran 1 hour and 35 minutes on its first charge. Not bad!

Thanks guys for all of you suggestions and support.

Cool, glad you got a solution that allows you to use standard sub-c's! You could measure your old pack and find out what the cells length were, and look on the interent, I belvie there are many variants of subc's etc if you were curious what the exact kind was...

Extra 40 mins of runtime is a good improvement!