Lantern upgrades?

[Megalamuffin]

I had to make a trip to the ace hardware that is right by my house. I checked the flashlight section while I was there and found they still sold a rayovac 6v krypton lantern and krypton bulbs. The lantern was $8, and I was tempted to buy it. I may go back for one later.

I would be fine using it as is, but I am curious if it can be feasibly modded with lithium ion batteries and an approptiate bulb? This is not something I would be doing out of practicality, but if it was feasible it may be a fun little project to play around with.

 

[ampdude]

I keep an Energizer Industrial lantern in the back of my car with a Magnumstar xenon bulb PR based. 6V lantern battery. I keep it there because it's reliable, throws very far with the reflector and has the power of incan to make things look normal and cut through fog. Why would you want to mess with that? Just get a li-ion LED light and be done with it if that's what you're looking for.

 

[Lynx_Arc]

While it is feasible the amount of effort and cost can be perhaps not worth the effort. There are the simple option to get a dropin LED bulb for it or design an LED module and a driver and modding the lantern with a charging circuit etc. I've considered such projects in the past and even have the battery holders and a host lantern before I ran out of funds for a driver and LED module. I think all in all you should decide what lumen output you desire from it, what runtime also and see if that can be made to happen.

 

[Megalamuffin]

I definitely wouldn't want to go the led route, but if there was a way to improve runtime with a different battery type it would be nice. The packaging claimed to have a 3 hour runtime at 75 lumens. That amount of light is just fine, but 3 hours isn't so great when a 6v battery is $10 on the cheaper end.

 

[Incandescent]

I'm not sure about Lithium-ion, but a quick search showed that there are readily available lantern battery adapters that hold 4 D cells. Something like that would open up a lot of options for using NiMH cells. You could use four D cells for long runtime, or four Eneloops in D cell adapters, along with a 4 cell xenon or halogen bulb which are decently bright. Another option would be to use 12 Eneloops in parallel three AA to D adapters, but that's a lot of cells to recharge. Another fun option would be to use two dummy cells plus two *series* three AA to D adapters, with 6 total Eneloops in series, plus a 6 cell xenon bulb or overdriven 5 cell krypton, both of which would be much brighter than the 4 cell.

 

[alpg88]

I have moded those batteries into rechargeable, get a battery that has a plastic body, (not rolled metall case) remove 4 F cells, brake off dividers, and turn it into any battery you want by placing any batteries type or number as well as electronic circuits.

 

[vicv]

Couldn't you get a 4s nimh or 2s lifepo4 hobby battery and stuff that in there. Maybe a couple in parallel if you can't get high mah batteries. Should give long runtimes and much flatter regulation. Plus easy to charge. That's what I'd do