I have settled on Soshine D cells. Pricey; but seems the best choice. I need a couple of dozen. I am going to use Fastek because of a sale today only.
Finding a smart charger for D cells is a whole bunch harder.
Does anyone have a good recommendation for a charger? I have looked a bunch of places. No reasonable success.
Thanks. I finally settled on the Soshine charger.
I was surprised my Xtar VC4 charged D cells —- If you have a charger that charges AA or AAA you can make a simple adapter with a dowel and 2 wires with magnets on the ends — I had a pic of mine but can’t seem to find it
Thanks; saved me some $$.
8 Bonai d cells 10,000 mah can be bought on amazon for around $38.
You might want to look at the customer comments here.
Thanks; They’re only on my wish list right now.
I do have 16 of their aaa for which I did a complete cycle on my li 500; all of them are ok so far.
Maybe I should run em again.
I wish someone made reliable D-size NiMH cells, but the news isn’t good.
I bought a bunch of Tenergy “light blue ‘e’ wrapper” D cells a few years ago.
They hold their charge for maybe a day or two, before they go low.
If you want reliable, use AA Eneloops with 3xAA to D adapters.
Yeah, the light blue Tenergy are pretty lame. Mine lasted about 2 years. I’ve got Radio Shack NiMh that are 10 years old that are still going.
Powerex might be OK. In general their batteries are good-expensive though.
A couple of points.
AA or AAA cells in a D shell just do not cut it. I have tried. Don’t do that.
I did as much as I could to identify the best D cell. I need low temperature (30F) cells; but do not have good data. They should work.
I tested 8 each of the C cells below multiple times on a Liitikala Engineer Lii-500 charger. Not a standard; but pretty good.
EBL - The worst. Range (in the sample of 8) of 4000 to 4175 for a 5000 rated cell.
Tenergy - No rating marked on the cell. Ran from 4200 to 4400. Two failed cells.
Soshine - Rated 5500. Range of 4460 to 4560. Below advertised, but a narrow range. Best for keeping sets reasonably consistent.
If what I have provided is not enough: The best place to look for exhaustive cell analysis is HKJ. He is present on this site. His level of detail may cause you to pass out in ecstasy. He has tested a number of D NiMh cells (and chargers). This site (Torchy the Battery Boy: NiMh D size Batteries) has a nice variety of D cells. Not reviewed at the level of KLJ, but useful. And it identifies many of the very bad cells.
There are an incredible number of quite useless garbage cells (names range into the hundreds) being sold on the web. Some at very high prices. The web could use some junk filters. But the people selling them get enough people to go for it to make it worth their while. It is called STEALING!
I did a rather large amount of reading. A whole bunch of searching for useful information. I hope it helps.
I have ordered 20 Soshine D cells and their charger. In my experience, chargers that have room for a full set of D cells are scarce. A post from chops728 above about a nice alternative to a real D cell charger. Should work fine if the charger has the power and smarts. I preferred to spend a few more bucks on the Soshine charger. Handy and simple.
Good luck to fellow D cell hunters. I strongly advise using the two sources I have included before your buy some BS in a can.
I’ve had good luck using 3 AA cells in a D shell. With three Eneloop Pro or black Fujitsu AA NiMH, you get 7200-7500 mAh capacity. This works well in my portable mattress pump.
It was 3 AA’s. I thought they would work. But in the cold they just were not enough. I am taking a chance with the new D’s