I have a Archer 1A V3 that took a spill about a week ago. The fall scraped and deformed on end at the bezel. The light kept working just fine for the past week. Today it fell about 18” to the floor. Now it will not work properly with Nimh batteries. I put a new alkaline in it and it works totally fine.
Here is how it functions:
Firefly, Light on, unscrew tail cap. tighten tail cap, firefly level comes on.
Low, Light on, unscrew tail cap. tighten tail cap, low level comes on. Summary here is firefly and low seem to work normal
Transition to medium, light sort of flickers, both on/off and in light intensity. High, same sort of thing. Strobe, light strobes with full brightness for a short time (single digit seconds), then starts looking like medium/high.
Medium, Light on , unscrew tail cap, tighten tail cap, light does not come on most of the time. If I push the mode select button, light comes on in the next higher mode, behaviour as above.
It seems to slowly be improving a bit. When this first happened, I cleaned the tail cap with alcohol. It was definitely a bit dirty. Just realized I did not clean the body. So I cleaned the body and the tail cap again, no change.
I would just return it, as it is in the 30 day window still, but I doubt it would be refunded due to the damage in the first fall.
I feel like this is some sort of loose connection, or dirty connection somewhere. I tried a fully charged Nimh cell at 1.45 V, and while it is a bit improved with that, nothing works as well as the new alkaline at 1.57V. Actually, upon further inspection, the new alkaline does not work perfectly either it does seem a bit better than the Nimh cells.
Suggestions?
I am thinking of disassembling it to find the loose connection. I have a solder iron, but the tip is sort of big. At my work I have access to smaller iron tips if necessary.
For disassembly, I have the fireplace going, which is a nice hot plate. would this be an appropriate way to heat the light to loosen the glue? Then how does disassembly proceed from there?
thanks, Matt