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Flashlight Destroyed by Leaking Batteries
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May 21, 2024
Batteries left in unused flashlights are destructive! They leak and get acid everywhere, and more often than not they destroy your flashlight. So what do you do for a 72-hour kit or bug-out bag? I had a flashlight in my 72-hour kit get destroyed by leaky batteries, and in this video I'll show you how I fixed it. Pantry Preparedness is a trademark of Income School LLC, an Idaho Limited Liability Company
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0:00
Well, hello, my friends in preparedness
0:04
Today I want to share with you something that has happened to me so many times
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It's kind of embarrassing. But I want to show you what to do about it
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And that's this. The other day, I was taken apart, 72 hour kits, showing kind of the state of these that
0:19
I hadn't looked at in I thought a few years. Turns out it had been 10 years since the last time
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Oh, man. I should be going through those probably annually. I don't even have ones for my kids
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But in my wife's 72 hour kid, I pulled out the flashlight
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And you can see here, that's the focus here, the status of this thing
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It doesn't work and it's because the batteries like exploded. And that happens over time if you leave regular old batteries, alkaline batteries in particular
0:52
inside of a flashlight. It seems to happen to be more in flashlights than anything else
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This is a decent flashlight LED. Granted, it's 10 years old. I think we have probably even better flashlights now that are pretty cheap
1:06
But still, I want to see if I can salvage it. And I'm going to show you exactly what I do to do this because like I said, I've done
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this so many times. So for this, we're only going to need a few things here
1:18
One, obviously the busted flashlight itself. I have a bowl here that we're going to be able to use simply just as a place to, first of all
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catch the liquids that we're going to use. and potentially kind of soak some of the components
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For a lot of it, I'm going to use, this is my favorite product for this. It's just regular old distilled white vinegar
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Same stuff you can use to cook with. Really, the acidity of the vinegar is enough that it should dissolve most of this battery acid
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The other thing that I like, I like to use this QD electronic cleaner
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This is, like it says, safe for sensitive electronics. It's safe on plastic
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So if we get down and there's like, like the, little there's like a kind of a little chip inside there or a little board if we get down in
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there and we find that it's got battery acid on it this is oftentimes the only thing that's
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going to work well to clean that off and it's safe for those components so unless the battery
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acid is essentially destroyed some of those connections we can usually get it to work again and
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then I've got some cotton swabs here just some regular old Q-tips that we're going to use to
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help with our cleaning process. So first things first, I'm going to take this cap here. I don't have
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a button on the cap. Sometimes it'll be on the back and so more of this will come apart. I'm just going to
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go ahead and take this. And I'm going to start by just putting a little bit of vinegar right here
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in this bowl. I'll just pour it right over the top here. And we can use this. Sometimes you'll want
2:52
something even more abrasive, but we can kind of just even let that soak a little bit. I'll put
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a little bit more in here. Vinegar's cheap. This whole bottle here, even in today's pricing
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cost me like two and a half bucks for 64 ounces. Vinegar's cheap
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The spring comes right out, which is great, because now I'm gonna fill up this whole thing
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set it in here. We're just gonna let that soak a little bit
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Okay, next, I wanna deal with what's inside here. I need to be able to get this little battery pack out
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Okay, so one of the things I can do, is I want to dissolve this
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The vinegar is going to be great for dissolving it, but I'm going to pour just a little bit in
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right there on the end. I want to be careful, I don't want to overdo it
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And I am getting a little bit of reaction taking place. You can see it's kind of reacting with that battery acid
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to help dissolve it. Just a little bit, kind of like that baking soda vinegar reaction
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but not as strong. And I'm just trying to kind of dissolve some of that
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Okay, we'll see if that'll help. Kind of get some of that out there
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Another thing I can do is I could use something to kind of start scraping that out
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Again, I'll start with a Q-tip to keep it gentle, but I might end up using like a pocket knife
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I just don't want to damage the threads. I don't want to screw things up too much
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You might be wondering, like, why the heck would you waste your time doing this when you can go buy another flashlight for like five bucks
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for like five bucks. The real reason is that right now I can go buy a flashlight for five
4:32
bucks but as we've seen in recent years the you're not always able to just go get the
4:37
supplies you want right when you want them. And you know if we get into a scenario
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where we don't have access to supplies and it turns out the flashlights that you
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have are not working you you could be in for trouble and if you just have some
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regular vinegar because you use it for cleaning or you You use it for you're literally making food with, right
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Then you can do this with just the vinegar. This electronics cleaner, it's nice
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I always keep them on hand. I've had enough electronics to get damaged through this
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but also just other things that it's just really nice to have a good electronics cleaner
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You'll see, like, as I'm pouring it down and it's kind of soaking it around
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then I pour it back out. I'm getting more reaction, which means there's, I'm
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probably dissolving a fair amount of the battery acid down underneath. The one thing I want to be careful of
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I don't want to like soak this too hard right now, is I just don't want this vinegar to get all over
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the little controller chip thing because that could not be great but it probably okay So I do have a couple of kind of larger chunks here There one kind of right down there at the bottom of white there
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So I am going to go ahead and I'm going to use a knife
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gently to just kind of scrape at it a little bit and break it apart. Even just breaking into it
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it's going to allow that vinegar to react with, it's going to have more surface
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more surface, it's going to allow that to react a little bit better with the battery acid that's left
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It's also going to help break it apart a little bit more just so that we can get this old
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this battery thing out of there. Because once that's out and we can really get inside and see
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how much damage there is, we're also going to be able to get to the inside and clean it a lot
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better, a lot more quickly. See, I'm getting way more reaction. now, that's because I scraped up that battery acid. I do have a fair amount of chemistry background
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I was actually a chemical engineer for a while. The smell of vinegar is one that I'm very accustomed to
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I worked at a chemical plant that used a lot of acetic acid, and acetic acid is the acid in vinegar
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It's just way distilled down. So that's basically what the chemical plant constantly smelled
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like was really strong vinegar. We are still not really loosening up very much. But I'm
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going to start doing some tapping here to see if I can get some movement. What I am getting
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is some chunks and stuff coming out from this vinegar soaking in. So I'm even now kind of cutting into
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the acid among the threads. But I'm staying inside the thread, so I'm being careful to not cut up and mess up my threads
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And I don't want to mess up this little battery holder either
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Alright, I'm going to go ahead, I'm going to take the other side off
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The reason for that is once I take this off and I take, if I can get these lights out, now
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to do that, to get that off in this case, I am going to need to be able to turn that
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It's threaded on the inside, but I may need to be able to kind of push it out
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And so in order to do that now, I'm actually going to go and take this off. This is about as bad as I've dealt with
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Probably because it's been sitting for 10 years. Now ideally, I would have something to better reach
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There's two little nibs there. And with the right tool, I could easily get kind of one tooth in each one
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I do not have one of those right here. Oh, but see how easy that is
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I'm just going to push on one of the two sides, and this ring is starting to unscrew
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Cool. That tells me that I probably don't have a ton of battery acid way down here
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at the little controller, or here at the lights, because if I did, this thing would be stuck in there a lot harder than it is
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Cool. Okay. And then carefully. Just stick that right there. Okay
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So we're a little, we're kind of lucky. This has gotten wet a little bit with the vinegar
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but I don't see a bunch of acid on it. If there were a lot of acid on this little board
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amongst like on these little circuits, then there'd be a much higher chance
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that this thing will never work right again. Then I will just carefully pull
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There we go. Okay. And then there's the little button. So this all looks pretty good
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In fact, when I look down inside there, I don't see a lot of acid in the lower portion
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So it's all kind of in that upper stuff. That's actually a really good sign
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Okay. I am going to want to clean this off fairly well and I will, I'll dry it pretty well and then I'll use this QD electronics cleaner to kind of clean that off just to make sure that everything's really good and clean
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And I'm going to want to make sure it's totally dry before I put any power on it
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Now this cleaner, you don't really want to get it on you
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So again, wearing some latex gloves or something is not a bad idea or just make sure you're
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not spraying it like into your hand. So I'm going to go get a paper towel to set this on and then we'll go ahead and spray it
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off a little bit. Okay, so I've just gone through and kind of sprayed that off
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Again, since it's safe on the plastic and it actually dries quickly, I know here it looks
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like there a puddle but off of here it dry really fast You can even like watch it drying I do that again so you can see it Just spray a little on here You see that Just drying super fast
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Anyway, so it makes it, it's a pretty good little cleaner. Alright. Try some inside here too
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Yeah, see this doesn't do as much to like dissolve that battery acid. All right, so next thing's next
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I'm going to just try to push this out. So I'm going to take one of these two handles and just kind of push it out
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Man. And then as we look inside there, we're going to see
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There's actually a lot of buildup right here. So that will be good to just kind of soak
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I'm going to take this spring out. That looks good and clean now
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This is not done yet, but it's getting there. I'll probably need to do some scraping on that too
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But this, I'm going to go ahead, actually, we'll start with this
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And I'm going to scrape out more of this. This is all, the stuff I'm working on now is past the threads
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So now I'm just kind of working on loosening all this up
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And we're gonna run some more vinegar through it. And then it's hard to see
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probably for you guys, but going down that tube further, there's a couple spots
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There's some spots where there was buildup that are kind of a long
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so they're kind of further down. So I'm going to do at this point is just kind of keep at this
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until I can get all of that white buildup out of there
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I want it all entirely gone. I also need to go ahead and remove these batteries
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This is why we don't leave batteries in flashlights when we're storing them
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at least not like these alkaline batteries. It's just this is what's going to happen
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I'm going to let these soak here for a little while. And then I'm going to get another bowl, a little bit bigger bowl
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I'm going to fill that up. I'm just going to soak this in it all the way entirely
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And then we'll come back in a little bit and see if that's at least softened it up real well so then I can use Q-tips as well as maybe even just some paper towel or something
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and just scrub on it like this and we'll get the rest of this out of there. When we're done here, my hope is that, again, because the electronics seem okay
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that we're still going to be able to make good contact here and be able to have a good functioning flashlight when we're done with this
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And you can see here the damage, I mean, it's clearly not new anymore, right
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The battery acid is actually caused pitting and stuff here in the metal
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So it's not something we want to let happen in the future
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Pour some fresh vinegar in here. Just let that dissolve for the next little while
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And I will be back in a little bit. All right, these have been here soaking for about an hour
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They're a lot better, but I still have big clumps. So I'm definitely going to have to do some scraping
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One thing that would probably work really well would be like a wire brush
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for example for inside the tube I could use a wire brush that like you use for
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soldering copper copper pipe so you could get one of those like at a at Lowe's or Home Depot just at the store
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this is probably about a one inch tube so it'd be a pretty good size one I know I have a half inch one
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because he's a lot of half inch copper pipe but I don't have a one inch on hand this is looking a lot
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better. So I might be able to just kind of finish this off. And we might be able to see if we can
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get this thing running again pretty quick here. So I'm going to do a little more scrubbing now
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that these have been soaking for a while and a little more scraping and see if we can get
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this good enough to be able to run well. I'd love to get as much of the battery acid out as possible
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because leaving some battery acid in there, it's more likely to cause this to happen again, basically
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to eat through new batteries, so we don't want that. So I'm going to try to scrape this out with a knife first
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and just kind of see if I can get a little bit further. A wire brush would also be great for these threads
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I think what I will do is just follow the threads carefully with the blade of this knife
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I'll just have to give the knife a good sharpen when I'm done. That's looking pretty good too
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See how well it goes in here. That's screwing in really nicely now too
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Okay, now everything else is totally dried off. I'm going to go ahead and use some of this electronics cleaner here
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Okay, and then we'll just dry off what's left with paper towel. and get the inside with Q because I definitely don want any moisture on the inside before I plug in this battery So it a lot better but you can still see there a lot
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Some of that is just kind of the metal having been etched
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because we're talking about possibly years of this battery acid just sitting there
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Most of my flashlights have never gotten this bad because most of them don't sit for years without me even looking at them
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But like I said, this one has been literally a decade. Okay, so we're going to give this a try
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All right, now I've let everything dry really good, but there's still a little bit more corrosion here than I'm okay with
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So before I put it together, I'm going to do just a little bit with this wire brush
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If you don't have a wire brush on hand, they come in handy for a lot of things
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Cleaning off battery terminals when they get all gunky like this, car battery, that kind of stuff
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There's, anyway, a lot of good reasons to have a wire brush on hand
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So I'm going to go ahead and just try to do just a little bit more here
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We've got a fair amount of damage here. I don't know how well you're going to be able to see that
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but you can see along here that's not a smooth ring right now like it once was
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that's what that acid does. So it's best if you're storing these flashlights in particular
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I've noticed, are really bad about this. If you're going to store them for very long
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don't keep batteries in them. I keep batteries with them, but not in them
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So I keep them just out, stored separately. All right, we're going to go ahead and try putting this back together
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and see if that was enough. I know that's lined up well, because now
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because now the clicking that button actually clicks the button. Okay. Okay
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So this actually had to come off. It's great when you're taking things apart to pay close attention
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If I have to, I can go re-watch my video. Pay close attention to the order you take things apart because that's kind of how you need to put them back
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All right. Now we put the spring back
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in the back here. That's going to push against this little battery
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This thing that holds all the batteries. And just make sure that you're putting them all in the right way
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The spring is usually against the negative side. Oftentimes there's little diagrams
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on them. So just follow the diagrams. Okay, then this goes in first. We'll put this
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together and have our moment of truth. See if we manage to repair this flashlight. Again
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I find that if this happens to five flashlights, I might be able to repair three of them
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Aha! And we have some light. There was none of that before. So, we have some light. There was none of that before
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So this has a few different settings. It's got only four of the little bulbs on
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I do this, and they're all on. See? Got some light. No light before
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Now we got some light. I bet if I had to guess this flashlight
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was probably originally stronger. I'll bet I'm not getting quite as much current flow now
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as we were originally when this was a new flashlight. But you know what
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I'm okay with the fact that now I have one that functions. The thing we need to do now though is just
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to make sure that as we store this thing long term, if I'm going to put back in a 72-hour kit
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I'll probably put maybe six, maybe nine batteries in a little bag or something
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maybe even vacuum seal them or something. I like to use the vacuum sealer and they don't move around a bunch
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But, yeah, just store them in a little baggy or something, throw them in that 72-hour kit
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and have them next to the flashlight. It's going to make it take an extra 30 seconds
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to be able to turn on your flashlight, but it's going to prevent this kind of
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of garbage and it's going to make so that when you actually need the flashlight, you actually
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have working batteries because the batteries you store in this flashlight are going to slowly
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drain and they probably won't work when the time comes that you need it. The last thing I'll say
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is that that recommendation to not store batteries and flashlights, that's not necessarily
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what I would do with a flashlight or a headlamp that I keep like in a junk drawer or something
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I have several throughout my house. I've had times where the power went out and it was helpful to have a flashlight nearby. In the age of
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cell phones, we most, most of us have a flashlight on our phone readily
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available to us, but still I like for emergency purposes that have flashlights
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throughout the house and we use them on a fairly regular basis. For those ones, I will keep batteries in them, but it's because we use them often enough that I
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see them, I change out their batteries. Obviously with this one, like I said, I was in a
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72-hour kit that I thought I'd opened within the last few years. years, it had been 10. So if you're going to store a flashlight, don't store it with batteries
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in it. I hope that was a helpful video for you and that you're able to recover any of the
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flashlights you have that may have been ruined in a similar manner. And I also hope to see
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you in our next video. You know
#Household Batteries