[CheeseHead]

I recently bought a NiteRider Digital Nite Owl light on Ebay. Supposedly worked great but needs a charger. Uh huh.

When I got the thing, the battery was plugged into the light. When I pulled the plug out, the plug came out in 3 pieces and had obviously been fried. That would explain why there was no charger, probably fried too. So, while investigating my options, it turns out not surprisingly, the battery has several dead cells too. So I went to Battery Plus to check on the price of a new 6v NiMH battery pack. He didn't have one, but they could make one. The guy suggested a 6v SLA battery. I told him I plugged in a 6v SLA battery I have from a Trail Rat light and the light went on, but faded to nothing in about 5 seconds. So we tried a new battery off his shelf and the same thing happened. The NiMH battery has a circuit board on it, so we tried running the 6v SLA THROUGH the NiMH battery and circuit board and same thing, light goes on, but fades out within several seconds.

Is there something within the light itself that could be shot? Maybe some electronics that could have gotten fried with everything else? When we were testing the light, we only hooked up the positive and negative feeds, not the red "data" wire that comes off the NiMH board. Would that matter?

Any help on this would be appreciated. I hate to spend any more money on this thing if it's not gonna work.

 

[Homebrew]

That sucks. I hope it was cheap. It sounds like you have a good light head, a busted battery and no charger.

At this point your best bet is to bypass ALL the electronics both inside the light head and the battery. Hardwire the battery to the light. The microswitch won't work anymore so you would have to unplug it to turn it off. I did this for a buddy on his old Digital NR and worked fine.

 

[x5rdman]

Well not sure about the Niterider Owl, but everytime I just plug in my Niterider Digital Headtrip it comes own and slowly dims out. That is the test mode, or something. Then when you hit the power button it comes on and stays on. Is that what is happening?

 

[CheeseHead]

No, no matter what I do the light goes on for about 5 seconds and then fades off. Pushing the power button does nothing before or after it fades. If I pull the plug out, and re-insert the battery it happens again. It appears the power switch or the board is shot.

I'm not using the NiMH battery because it was toast. I'm plugging it into a 6v SLA battery. I want to make sure the light is OK before buying a new NiMH battery. But even an SLA should provide more burn time than that. This light has all the flashing and SOS modes on it, I wonder if the circuit board within the light is toast along with the original battery, which as I stated looked like it had been shorted out. Maybe everything got fried except the bulb.

 

[Jim311]

I bet something is wrong with the circuitry in the light. It has a board in it that's supposed to power it off when it detects low voltage, supposedly to save your battery from complete discharge.

 

[CheeseHead]

I dissambled the light, removed the circuit board, wired in a toggle switch and the light works fine with an SLA battery. I'm doing a 24 hour race this weekend so I'll see how it performs and worry about a better, lighter battery after that.

 

[Jim311]

I used a Niterider headlamp and put a 12 volt 20 watt bulb in it, and bought a lithium battery from a company called Batteryspace. 4+ hours @ 20 watts and the battery is super lightweight. I'm very pleased.