Help please - Bottle Cage Battery Supplier Required

I have a 12V halogen light.

Having changed my bike, the battery pack will not now fit - it hangs from a
pack that will not fit on the frame.

Does anybody know if there is there anywhere that supplies bottle-cage sized
battery packs.

So far I've only been able to find suppliers of the full light/battery kit.
I don't need to change the lamp, so I'm trying to get just the bottle-cage
sized battery.

Any pointers appreciated.

Cheers

Mike

"Mike_P" writes:

I have a 12V halogen light.

Having changed my bike, the battery pack will not now fit - it hangs
from a pack that will not fit on the frame.

Does anybody know if there is there anywhere that supplies
bottle-cage sized battery packs.

So far I've only been able to find suppliers of the full
light/battery kit. I don't need to change the lamp, so I'm trying to
get just the bottle-cage sized battery.

You'll need to find a source for whatever connector goes onto your
lamp cable but I'd definitely recommend either

http://www.modelpower.co.uk/

who deal in Nicad and MiMh packs and will make custom ones to your spec, or

http://www.aurorra.co.uk/

who primarily sell lithium polymer cells and packs. A pack of 3 LiPo
cells in series will give you around 12v and will be a lot smaller and
lighter than Nicad or NiMh.

I've used both companies and would definitely buy from them again.

Chris
--
Chris Eilbeck
MARS Flight Crew http://www.mars.org.uk/
UKRA #1108 Level 2 UYB
Tripoli UK Member #9527 LSMR

Wow - that was quick.

Thanks - I'll check them out.

Cheers
Mike

Mike_P wrote:
I have a 12V halogen light.

Having changed my bike, the battery pack will not now fit - it hangs
from a pack that will not fit on the frame.

Does anybody know if there is there anywhere that supplies
bottle-cage sized battery packs.


So far I've only been able to find suppliers of the full
light/battery kit. I don't need to change the lamp, so I'm trying to
get just the bottle-cage sized battery.

How about over-volting the lamp for greater brightness and efficiency?
Lumicycle do high-quality 13.2V NiMH and 14.8V Li-Ion in both bottle and bag
options (despite what the initial picures show):
http://www.lumicycle.com/Product/Pro...x?page=1&dep=5

~PB

Mike_P wrote:
I have a 12V halogen light.

Having changed my bike, the battery pack will not now fit - it hangs from a
pack that will not fit on the frame.

Does anybody know if there is there anywhere that supplies bottle-cage sized
battery packs.

Make your own. See "http://www.myra-simon.com/bike/bott-batt.html" for
the general idea.

Use ten 1.2V AA cells (or 11 if you want to over-voltage, and if your
charger will charge a 13.2V pack).

If you have a 12V lead acid battery pack, then you may have to figure
out something else. You might look at an oversize water bottle holder
such as the MK3 from "http://www.bikebuddy.co.uk/index.html." You could
probably figure out a way to use the clamps to go around the existing
battery pack, with the use of some fillers.

The 12V bottle batteries that I've seen from companies like Night-Sun
are very expensive, i.e. $100 for a 30WH battery (see
"http://www.night-sun.com/htmldocs/stuff_civilian.html").

Steve
"http://bicyclelighting.com"

in message , Mike_P
') wrote:

I have a 12V halogen light.

Having changed my bike, the battery pack will not now fit - it hangs
from a pack that will not fit on the frame.

Does anybody know if there is there anywhere that supplies bottle-cage
sized battery packs.

So far I've only been able to find suppliers of the full light/battery
kit. I don't need to change the lamp, so I'm trying to get just the
bottle-cage sized battery.

Is your present battery a lead-acid cell, or is it a pack of NiCad or
NiMH cells? If the latter, take em out, get a bottle, pack them into the
bottle, sorted. The Lumicycle battery pack is just an ordinary plastic
water bottle with cells packed inside and the cable led out through
where the drinking nipple has been cut off. Simple, but it works fine.
There's a bit of packing material round the cells but that's really all
there is to it.

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; It appears that /dev/null is a conforming XSL processor.

Thanks for the idea SMS.

11 AA batteries in a bottle, could work and should fit.

Do you have any idea how to calculate what the run time would be. As NiMh's
aren't cheap it would be an expensive experiment to find out the light only
ran for 12 mins.

Regards
Mike

"SMS" wrote in message
...
Mike_P wrote:
I have a 12V halogen light.

Having changed my bike, the battery pack will not now fit - it hangs from
a pack that will not fit on the frame.

Does anybody know if there is there anywhere that supplies bottle-cage
sized battery packs.

Make your own. See "http://www.myra-simon.com/bike/bott-batt.html" for the
general idea.

Use ten 1.2V AA cells (or 11 if you want to over-voltage, and if your
charger will charge a 13.2V pack).

If you have a 12V lead acid battery pack, then you may have to figure out
something else. You might look at an oversize water bottle holder such as
the MK3 from "http://www.bikebuddy.co.uk/index.html." You could probably
figure out a way to use the clamps to go around the existing battery pack,
with the use of some fillers.

The 12V bottle batteries that I've seen from companies like Night-Sun are
very expensive, i.e. $100 for a 30WH battery (see
"http://www.night-sun.com/htmldocs/stuff_civilian.html").

Steve
"http://bicyclelighting.com"

Thanks for the link Pete. This is just the sort of thing I've been looking
for.

Having looked at the Lumicycle site I'm very tempted to pay a bit more and
replace the whole set with a nice new twin lamp spot/flood.

Now look what you've gone and made me do. :-)

Cheers
Mike

"Pete Biggs" p@melonbiggs{remove fruit}.tc wrote in message
...
Mike_P wrote:
I have a 12V halogen light.

Having changed my bike, the battery pack will not now fit - it hangs
from a pack that will not fit on the frame.

Does anybody know if there is there anywhere that supplies
bottle-cage sized battery packs.


So far I've only been able to find suppliers of the full
light/battery kit. I don't need to change the lamp, so I'm trying to
get just the bottle-cage sized battery.

How about over-volting the lamp for greater brightness and efficiency?
Lumicycle do high-quality 13.2V NiMH and 14.8V Li-Ion in both bottle and
bag
options (despite what the initial picures show):
http://www.lumicycle.com/Product/Pro...x?page=1&dep=5

~PB

Mike_P wrote:
[Lumicycle]
Thanks for the link Pete. This is just the sort of thing I've been
looking for.

Having looked at the Lumicycle site I'm very tempted to pay a bit
more and replace the whole set with a nice new twin lamp spot/flood.

Now look what you've gone and made me do. :-)

Yes, the lamps are only about thirty quid afterall. Sorry, I'm not helping,
am I? ;-)

~PB

Mike_P wrote:
Thanks for the idea SMS.

11 AA batteries in a bottle, could work and should fit.

Do you have any idea how to calculate what the run time would be. As NiMh's
aren't cheap it would be an expensive experiment to find out the light only
ran for 12 mins.


Capacity of a battery pack in watt-hours, divided by wattage of lamp,
will give runtime in hours.

AA NiMH cells are typically 2.1 Amp-hour though up to about 2.6 AH
are available at higher cost. A pack made up of 13.2V worth of 2.1 AH
cells will have a capacity of 2.1 * 13.2 = 27.7 Watt-hours.
So you might expect a 10W lamp to run for 2.7 hours.

Unfortunately it's not that easy - the cells are rarely as good
as quoted (although the capacity can improve after the first few
charging cycles) and in any case will be less than quoted if
discharged fast. The 2100maH rating is probably correct for
a 10-hour discharge not a 3-hour discharge.

So derate by an arbitrary amount. Maybe that pack would operate
a 10W lamp for 2 hours, a 20W lamp for less than an hour, and
a 5W lamp for more than 4 hours.

-adrian