Oldham GL 16

[simonsays]

After failing to follow one of the basic eBay rules (do not browse whilst drunk) I find myself in possession of a brand new  Oldham GL16 caplamp.... I'm not quite sure what to do with it!

I *think* its a fairly standard Oldham head with the two halogen bulbs but has a rather large yellow battery rated as 3.7 volts and 16 amp hours. I believe that this contains 8 lithium cells wired in parallel.

So far, so good....

In the cold (sober) light of day I'm now faced with a couple of problems.

How the heck am I going to charge this behemoth of a battery?  I do have a through the headset charger designed to charge a Chinese miners lamp containing 3 parallel wired lithium cells. It's marked as 4.2v and 600 mAh. Is this likely to be able to safely charge the Oldham battery?

Second problem... I've no real desire to cave with a 48 lumen halogen so assuming I can sort my charging issues out what sort of drop in would folks recommend? Obviously with such a big battery I would have the capacity to run something pretty bright for quite some time.

Or should I just scrap the whole idea and bung it back on eBay? 

 

[AR]

Phil at Caving Supplies in Buxton would probably be the best person to speak to about getting hold of the right charger for one of these, and as for an LED module to replace the halogens, there are a few people doing them for Oldham heads, Mike Hrybyk and Biff  are the two that spring to mind, or you could let Roy Fellows loose on it if you want a real death-ray of a lamp....

 

[owd git]

would this suffice? free via caver post!
O. G.

 

[peterk]

PDF's for lamp and chargers are here http://www.enersys-hawker.com/downloadarea/download.asp?lang=e#down

 

[AdM Michael]

Don't use any of the old leadacid-stuff for charging your new lithium battery. If you get a new single-charger (black plastic) make sure it's the right one for the lithium battery, otherwise it won't last long.

 

[skippy]

Simon,
Rip out the old reflector and bulbs and 'retro' fit a Pitlamp LED module or similar.

 

[Speleokitty]

Crikey OG I wodered what had happened to my old charger. Unless you have made some changes it was only set up for Lead acid batteries.

I think I gave that one away to Sougher junior about 15 years ago.

 

[simonsays]

Thanks for the replies. Food for thought.

OG, many thanks for the kind offer. Thats a lovely looking bit of kit that I would love to own but swmbo has 'that' look in her eyes so I must respectfully decline :-[

Developments... I plugged the lamp into the charger that came with my cheapo chinese miners lamp (also li-ion powered) and it seemed to be charging fine. Well, it didnt catch fire anyway :-\  So at least I know I can charge the battery.

Sooo.... What to do with it?  I'm tempted to send Bif more of my money for a pitlamp module. I've used his duo inserts and they just work beautifully. I also hear and read good things about Bisun and retro xp drop-ins. As far as I can tell I could use all three of these with the huge 16 Ah battery.

Another choice would be to send the lamp to Roy Fellows and have him turn it into a fire breathing monster. Up to 500 lumens with the existing battery or 3200 with a different 12v supply. Eek     Possibly overkill for wandering round the churns but perhaps useful for clearing a path through the parties of excited/scared outward bounders


I must confess that the tinkerer in me is a small nagging voice telling me to buy some bits and build something myself. I'm sure that this would end *badly*. Running through the cave with my hair on fire *badly*