Last Night I spent about a half an hour checking every AA and AAA light I own to make sure I never lose a light to alkalines again .
I picked up a nitecore EZ AA and twisted to get itr to fire up and realized I had a dead battery in it ...Oh wait a minute it's a dead duraleak ..it took me another 45 minutes to clean it out with lemon juice and a dental pic etc to get it to fire up again.
Why do i like eneloops?? Because this will never happen again on my watch ...never !
Not a light, but my $200 graphics calculator which I surprisingly rescued by stupidly dipping half of it in water and splashing around and then letting it dry a week before using again.
I have an inova x1 uvt with a leaky pos energizer from 3 yrs ago. I’ve had it for yrs with no problems but one day decided to use an alkie and left it in there. I still can’t remove the tailcap.
4/7s Quark AA squared Tactical. To be fair, it is a light my son uses and went against standard Cone SOPs buy using alki-leaks instead of Eneloops. It is now on its way back to 4/7s because the head is having performance issues. He also had a leaky battery in his red Sipik 68 at the same time.
There is the lesson of not using alkalines in expensive/important devices to be learned, of course, but the more important lesson for me is that maybe you shouldn’t let 12 year olds have access to said “expensive/important devices” in the first place.
Maglite 6D cost around £25 ~ $38 in U.K.
Not “Lost” just I’ve rinsed it out and left it to dry and can’t be bothered to clean it properly.
I’m a convert to 18650’s now and frankly after SolarForce buying I’m in no hurry to go back although I have 6D - AA converters and 12 AA 2850 rechargeable NiMH’s so I’m set when I get round to it. There’s a TTS 180 Lumen upgrade in the Maglite so I’ll get working on it eventually.
An old Romisen 2xAA side clicky I gave to my dads. It had Duracells in it and the tail was stuck. Again half an hour with penetrating oil, freeze, hot water etc I could open the cap. Wasn’t a disaster but one of the cells were fatter and I needed quite some work to make it out. The head wasn’t opening due to the side switch.
Vinegar works a charm on alkaline leaks. I coated the contacts with a mild cleaning/protecting oil, Ballistol to prevent oxidation.
