Had one of the recalled magicshine battery packs pack it in...

[DeeEight]

during a charge cycle. It'd been not holding a charge very long for awhile (I figured a bad cell was tripping the voltage protection on the board early) and it apparently has screwed its pooch while sitting unused for the past four months because when I went to charge it, it ended up VERY hot 7 hours later when I checked it and noticed the charging light was still going.

Hot enough that it had melted away the black shrink wrap on either side of one of the 18650 cells (presumably the bad one) as well as a piece of the blue wrap on that individual cell but the whole pack was super saturated with heat. I moved it to the tile floor of my entry hall inside a porcelin container, and let it sit there. Two hours later the battery cells were still warm to the touch. I've clipped off the leads to re-use and yanked off the circuit board from the cells and am going to just chuck them all into an Ikea store battery recycling chute later today. Oh all the cells have a round silver sticker with a holographic Q on them, not sure if that was supposed to mean they passed quality control or anything but it sure might help identify them to a bad batch.

Anyone else dissected their packs and found such stickers on their batteries ?

[desolder]

Mine didn't have any holographic sticker on the cells. They're just shrink wrapped with plastic.

I've had my MS for two seasons now, and the cells are self-discharging pretty quickly and unevenly, requiring me to use a balance charger every time. Plus, they're now getting warm when recharging. Normally, Li-ion cells don't warm up at all during recharge. So this heating is a sign the cells are starting to go. I'm thinking of getting some higher quality Sanyo or Panasonic cells and building a new pack, reusing the protection board and connector.

[DeeEight]

I rebuilt one pack that was failing (wasn't a magicshine, but was another china-made 2s2p square block configured ebay one) in the fall using a 2s2p w/PCM holder case and 4 Panasonic NCR18650A 3100 cells (the 4 side by side ones) which of course doesn't fit the magicshine battery bags but does slip better into a jersey pocket. I re-used the lead from the pack I took apart and just soldered it to the leads coming off the battery holder.

This is the holder I used...

1* Battery Holder/Case for Li-ion 18650 17670 battery+ 2S2P w/PCM output:6-8.4V | eBay

I wish I could find a holder retailer that has the square configuration holders so I could keep using the otherwise perfectly adequate magicshine battery bags.