What is the difference between an T5 oldham megalight and a T6? can someone explain or show me a picture.

Regards.

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The T5 has ventholes on the side and requires topping up with distilled or deionised waterevery 4 to 6 weeks when in regular use.

The T6 has plugs on the top of the battery between the terminals instead of the ventholes and is maintenance free / requires no water addition.

Both batteries should have 16 Ah.

......... is maintenance free / requires no water addition.

:lol::lol::lol:

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Maintenance free is what Oldham claimed them to be.

I never liked them in the lamproom or on my own lamps. They still could have done with some occasional maintenance but the design made it so difficult that we left these batteries alone and phased them out whenever possible.

I always think of Oldhams as "black battery", "clear battery" and "red battery"

The black ones were ex-NCB and typically good for 4 to 6 hours' main beam, but cavers all carried carbide lamps and just lived with it.

The red ones often had vent plugs made from biro end-plugs and a twist of wire, because cave water isn't good for battery cells! Hard-core cavers had hybrid lamps made from assorted headsets fitted to red batteries - real hard-core ones had lamps made from ancient Youle or Wolf lamps with ex-WD NiFe cells inserted! These gave a light not unlike a candle in a brown glass bottle. Note that this was pronounced "knife", not "ni-fee" in those days.

The clear batteries were often the first new lamps a caver owned. Biro-end vent plugs were still in fashion - remember to take them out when charging!

They don't make em like that any more..... just as well, really. Now I have a Chinese thing like a tiny yellow box, lamp flex up over the crown in vintage style, and it suits me because it gets nil maintenance and seems quite unaffected

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Biro-end vent plugs were still in fashion - remember to take them out when charging!

I went one better, I fitted screws and tap washers, and carried a screwdriver underground on long trips to vent the cells.
Needed regular replacement due to corrosion though

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real hard-core ones had lamps made from ancient Youle or Wolf lamps with ex-WD NiFe cells inserted! These gave a light not unlike a candle in a brown glass bottle.

Gosh! So I was hard core! (actually my ex-MOD NiFe cells were potted into an Oldhamd 'R' type case, so perhaps I wasn't really hard core...

Latterly you could obtain NiFe compatible xenon-filled bulbs, achieving a light comparable to a standard Oldham - but lasting even beyond the longest 12 to 14 hour surveying trip. Hi-tech for the time (circa 1984!) [/i]

Biro-end vent plugs were still in fashion - remember to take them out when charging!

I went one better, I fitted screws and tap washers, and carried a screwdriver underground on long trips to vent the cells.
Needed regular replacement due to corrosion though

Gaffer tape

Gaffer tape

Nah motorcycle innertube!

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Gaffer tape

Nah motorcycle innertube!

Why didn't I think of that.

I am a big fan of inner tube. In the hands of the imaginative mine explorer they have a myriad of uses. I hacked one up last week to snoopy loop my spare light to my new lid.

I remember (in the Good Old Days....sigh ::) ) that the prelude to a weekend's c****g in Ingleton was calling in at the garage and scrounging old inner tubes for use as kneepads...