Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[Bitumen Boy]

A few years ago, fed up of cheapy plastic torches that broke after 5 minutes, I invested in an LED Maglite, which hadn't long come on the market. Still using it now, but the LED uses so little current that I've never had to change the batteries. Anyhoo, the other day I was having a fiddle as you do, and had a look at the batteries. I found one of them had started to leak, and was corroding the barrel, despite not being flat or even obviously weak. Batteries were good ones - Duracell - and within date, but as I say had been in place for a few years.

The corrosion wasn't extensive, and luckily was confined to the tail end of the barrel (4D length!) where it was easy to scrape it back to bright metal, following which I washed the debris out and applied plenty of Vaseline to that area of the barrel, and also to the new batteries. Looks like I got away with it this time, but if you have any LED torches I'd say it would definitely pay you to inspect the batteries more frequently than you otherwise might - and maybe replace them every couple of years even if they don't appear to need it.

If you're in the market for a new torch I'd suggest that unless you're using it literally all the time - say for police or security work - it's probably not worth going for more than a 2 cell type, and even then D cells may be overkill. Rechargeables, of course, retain their traditional pros and cons which we don't need to go into here...

[kevin2306]

Slightly related but I've had a battery issue this week.
My son has a high end portable guitar amp, that uses 6 x aa batteries. Gets used all the time but batteries last well.
Always use Duracell and this week it stopped working. Pulled the batteries to find quite a bit of corrosion and leakage. Batteries are weeks old. Cleaned everything up and put some contralube on the terminals.

Perhaps Duracell aren't what they used to be?

Kev

[Bitumen Boy]

Could well be that Duracell aren't what they used to be, the same though had crossed my mind. Was it all 6 batteries or just 1 or 2? My torch it was only 1 out of 4 but of course had to change the lot anyway.

[kevin2306]

[alanb]

When adjusting the clocks for British summer time I noticed the Duracell AA cell in our mantle clock badly corroded, the clock still kept perfect time but I had a devil of a job trying to clean the terminals.
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old tourer


Morris 8 two seater

[Bitumen Boy]

Is a pattern starting to emerge here?

[Penman]

Hi
I can't remember but which is the terminal which tends to corrode on our car batteries?

Could it be caused by dissimilar metals in contact in the same way that brass to steel or aluminium to steel tend to corrode?
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Bristols should always come in pairs.

Any 2 from:-
Straight 6
V8 V10

[ka]

The positive one.
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KA

Better three than four.

[ukdave2002]

If you recall school days chemistry; any 2 dissimilar metals in the presence of an a electrolyte will corrode, most dry cells have nickel plated steel terminals as do the contacts, so electrolytic corrosion would be unlikely, I think we are talking about cell/ battery leakage, this is different to electrolytic corrosion..

Dave

[Bitumen Boy]

Definitely battery leakage in my case. There really shouldn't be any electrolytic corrosion in a top-brand torch used with top-brand batteries, though going on this I suspect Duracell aren't the top brand they once were.

[kevin2306]

Leakage here too, and in a weird unrelated incident this week, whilst carrying out handovers on 40 houses to one of our clients yesterday, about 30 batteries failed in the smoke alarms. They have been fitted for about 8 weeks and all alarms started bleeping within an hour of each other.
Won't mention the make!

Kev

[winchman]

Just took the head torch out of the camper and you guessed it, Duracell leaking!
Didn't they come with a no leak warranty?
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It will come in handy even if you never use it.

[lowdrag]

Bought a big torch from Tesco's recently and it was all of £6. Big torch you can use on half or full power and a tube light as well. It even came complete with the batteries. I reckon it'll be cheaper to buy a new one than to change the batteries!

[goneps]

Coming a bit late to this discussion, I've always found Duracell disappointing. In the days when the choice was between ordinary batteries or Duracell at several times the price their life seemed to be little or no better than the ordinary type, so the expense was not justified.

Much the same can be said for rechargeable AA batteries, of which I have two sets of four. The Panasonic ones hold their charge reasonably well. but the Energiser are pathetic (and the same can be said for their non-rechargeable batteries, despite the extravagant advertising claims). In any case, for some reason rechargeables are only 1.2V instead of 1.5V, so they start off at a disadvantage even when fully charged. A total waste of money.

By far the best batteries in my opinion are of Japanese manufacture. Those that come with electronic gear seem to last indefinitely.

This also applies to car batteries. The used import 1994 Nissan Cefiro (Japanese Maxima) I bought in 2004 came from Japan with a new Panasonic battery, which was still in excellent condition when I sold the car eight years later. Most car batteries sold in NZ last only four or five years, at best.

Richard

[lowdrag]

I bought a high-end make instead of supermarket brand AA rechargeables. I've already thrown two away inside 18 months due to leakage.

But off topic, car batteries seem to go on and on these days. One I changed this year after fifteen years of car ownership, and it was in the car when I bought it. That's a dry cell one, but I sold a Mercedes after 13 years with the original battery, and the other normal battery is still going strong in the E-type after eleven years. Even the garden tractor is only on its second battery after eighteen years,