# Can I update my old 6 volt Cygo Lite Battery?



## caak (Oct 31, 2007)

G'day,

I purchased a Cygo Lite Rover / Metro Light some years back, mainly for commuting. It is a 6 Volt system with dual Halogen globes (Max Watts in 6.5W Per Bulb). It comes with a Water Bottle battery pack which I think is Ni-Cad.

The battery only holds for approximately 45mins with both lights on, so the question is can I refresh the batteries so that I can get more burn time?

Am I able to upgrade to a NiMh or Lithium Battery? If yes, I'd need a new charger as well right?

I am hoping to use this light on the handle bars and then purchase a new helmet LED light from AyUp lights.

Any assistance is most appreciated. :thumbsup: :thumbsup:


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## Diomedes (Oct 29, 2007)

If you have some DIY capability, you could easily build a battery pack for your light, using ordinary AA, C, or D cells. I recently build this 4.8v pack using 1/2" schedule 40 PVC, an end cap, a female thread adapter, a threaded plug, a spring from a trash flashlight, a random nut and bolt or two, some wire lying around and a few tamiya connectors.










It took a little bit of messing around to figure out the best way to wire the thing, but it works really well now, and is completely waterproof. I'm using 4 2400mah AA cells; in order to make it 6v, you would just use 5 cells instead of 4 in series. Total watt-hours for a 6V AA pack would be conservatively about 13 (batteries rarely have their true rated capacity) which would give you about one hour of runtime with both bulbs on. That's not much better than you are getting now, but consider that you could probably modify this design pretty easily to use C or D cells which would result in better runtime. Or just build two of them and wire them in parallel to double the Mah. Or (and this is what I'm doing for my light) just carry extra AA's and pop them in when things get dim. 

Sorry for the crappy pic; it is all that I have at this time, but I plan to post a some more detailed step-by step pictures for the next one that I build. Its cheap though- the PVC costs something like $4, and the batteries about $10. In order to do it right, you also need a soldering iron, which is something like $8 from Radio Shack, and a bit of solder.

[edit] In case you are wondering about mounting to the bike- it straps to the top tube with velcro straps. Its been perfectly secure so far; I've bounced all over the place on rough trails with nary a problem.


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## DeeEight (Jan 13, 2004)

This is what I use for my lights... you get the battery holders at TheSource, along with the wiring and connectors. Basically you can just cut the wire lead off your existing battery at the bottle end, then wire it to a 4 cell AA holder and a 9V connector end in series. The 9V connector end allows you to fit another battery holder with 9V terminals to the 4cell unit to get 5, 6, 7, 8, etc total cells. I'd go with a 2-cell holder for 7.2V total output, and overvolt your existing bulbs for a nice 92% boost in light output from them. With 2650mah AA NiMh Duracells you'd get about an 2 1/2 hours on one light and 1 1/4 on both. Just use a duracell or energizer (or TheSource) branded quick-charger for the batteries.


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## caak (Oct 31, 2007)

Thanks for the info..

DeeEight,

If I go with one of these 6xAA holders with 6 NiMh cells at 2400 mah, that would essentially give me the 7.2V total output?

I took the sealed lead acid battery out of the water bottle holder. It is a 6V 3.2Ah. I could just replace it, however I assume that a AA NiMh pack would give me additional benefits?

This unit is perhaps another off the shelf option?


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## DeeEight (Jan 13, 2004)

caak said:


> If I go with one of these 6xAA holders with 6 NiMh cells at 2400 mah, that would essentially give me the 7.2V total output?


Correct.



> I took the sealed lead acid battery out of the water bottle holder. It is a 6V 3.2Ah. I could just replace it, however I assume that a AA NiMh pack would give me additional benefits?


Weight for one, the charge density of NiMH's is easily double that of SLAs. For example, I had been using a 12V-2.2Ah SLA for one of my helmet lights (which had a 12V-12W bulb, so 1 amp draw gave that battery about 2h12m of run-time from full charge). That battery weighed 28 ounces. I replaced it with one that battery setup pictured above which weighs 14 ounces. So more capacity at half the weight. You could wire two 6-cell packs together in parallel to the outgoing leads off your bottle battery, and they'd fit together into a bottle to get a combined 4800mah (using those 2400mah cells). With a 4-cell/3-hour fast charger, you could charge all 12 batteries in about 9 hours.



> This unit is perhaps another off the shelf option?


It is if you don't want to muck around with individual AA batteries. You're still going to need to do some re-wiring to convert your existing leads from the lamp to work with the new battery pack.


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## Dominik.M (Sep 21, 2007)

Sorry but AA's NiMH's su.... When you need a bike light for more than 3 hours only Li-Ion packs stays in the game. 
6x AA NiMH 2500mAh (7,2V 2,5Ah) *168g* 
2x 18650 Li-Ion 2400mAh (7,2V 2,4Ah) *89g*
And it is enough for 10 hours for 1 led @350mA (100 lumens) you need at last 3 leds so : 
*504 g* vs *267g*
*18 AA's* vs *1 pack*


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## sean newell (Aug 15, 2006)

how about a 7.2v radio control/model car battery? Cheap 2ah nicad ~ 20$ [Aus] or up to 5 ah Nimh [ more expensive ] . don't need to mess about with all those AAs & recharges in 2-3 hours


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## DeeEight (Jan 13, 2004)

Dominik.M said:


> Sorry but AA's NiMH's su.... When you need a bike light for more than 3 hours only Li-Ion packs stays in the game.
> 6x AA NiMH 2500mAh (7,2V 2,5Ah) *168g*
> 2x 18650 Li-Ion 2400mAh (7,2V 2,4Ah) *89g*
> And it is enough for 10 hours for 1 led @350mA (100 lumens) you need at last 3 leds so :
> ...


READ THE MESSAGES FOR A CHANGE....

#1 We're discussing battery packs for a halogen lamp... we don't care how long you're getting from led's for runtime.

#2 I already pointed out that Li-Ions are lighter than NiMh... they are also a LOT more expensive though.


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## jeffj (Jan 13, 2004)

You could go with one of these for $30.95:

http://www.batteryspace.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=2323

This 5000mah battery would power one 6.5w light for approximately 4.6 hours or both 6.5w (13w total) lights for 2.3 hours.

This smart charger for $26.95 would take 2.5 hours to charge at the 2 amp setting or 5 hours at the 1 amp setting. The 2 amp setting would not be hard on these cells in any way. Looks to be a very versatile charger. Just wire it to fit your battery connectors.

http://www.batteryspace.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=3005


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## caak (Oct 31, 2007)

Phase 1 of the modification. Thanks to all for guidance so far..

I went with a 6 cell AA holder some left over joiners and 6 1.2V AA NiMH 2400mAh batteries.

I used my son's neoprene Nintendo DS case and an old velcro strap from my underwater scuba diving light. Total cost was approx $35.

Burn time with the two 6 watt halogens was approx 50mins. I want to increase the burn time, so how I do I run another 6 cells in parallel?

This will give me 7.2V and 4800mAh correct?

On the Bike.. Giant Trance X1



The Kit



The total kit (so far)



Thanks again for the help to date, it is much appreciated. :thumbsup: :thumbsup:


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## jeffj (Jan 13, 2004)

caak said:


> Burn time with the two 6 watt halogens was approx 50mins. I want to increase the burn time, so how I do I run another 6 cells in parallel?
> 
> This will give me 7.2V and 4800mAh correct?


You don't want to hook up multicell battery packs in parallel. If they are not precisely matched, they won't likely discharge and charge to the same levels. Even if they are matched, it's not a great idea for long term sustainability.

Better to just build separate battery packs and deal with them individually.

You can get a 6v 10,000mah battery pack for about $50 that would run 12w lights for about 5 hours. You can figure that each watt (w) will consume about 167miliiamps per hour (mah)A 6w light will consume about 1000mah and a 12w light will consume about 2000mah. You can do the math from there to figure out how much battery you need.

Just don't hook them up in parallel if you want them to be efficient and last.


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