I been thinking about it, and I think I would like them to find a solution that involves a new battery tube, or driver retainer ring. That way I am sure by removing the driver spring, and modifying the tail, you MAY be able to stuff a 18500 in there.
Also, anyone that got one… what is the “survival hammer”? Im guessing just a plate that screws into the tail… pics?
Generally a metal spike which screws into the tail. It’s used for breaking glass, like if you’re stuck in a car and need to quickly get out through the window.
Looking at data on common causes of death though, the effort involved in getting and carrying a glass breaker would probably be better spent on healthy food or exercise or getting permission to telecommute instead of driving.
Working on it getting to the driver now. Not looking good so far. Clearly there's a vertical board, or posts going to a parallel board, in there because of the solder points next to the spring (in pics). There's a resistor right below the center hole of the shelf, aligned with the USB charger I suppose, so there's something horizontal on the top of the pill.
Mine is the 219C version. I measured 6A on a purple EFEST, 10.3A on a VTC6. On the EFEST, it drops like a rock: ~1,000 lumens down to 700 in 30 secs. On the VTC6, it held high output pretty good, then ~15 secs it seemed to go to strobe on it's own. At start it was about 1,500 lumens. After 30 secs, it's hard to turn the light OFF because of that stupid press&hold and the burning sensation on the fingers 
. It's super hot. The MCPCB is copper, but only bout 1.5 mm thick. I ran it again for 30 secs and could not repeat the strobe mode changing. 1st time I had in the PVC light box when it switched - noticed the readings were erratic and pulled it out - strobe was on.
The 4 mode set does not have turbo. All 4 modes are 50% higher in lumens with the VTC6 over the 18350 - they scale with the cell. 4 mode set has memory, 7 mode set doesn't (pretty sure).
Might pull the switch to see what's going on there.
So…. the S42 is like buying a bicycle designed by a fish?
Should have removed the USB plug before pushing out the driver. Applying some pressure with a solder pick thru the wires hole did the trick, just has to be careful to poke at bare board space, not any SMD's. The used a thermal soft glue, looks like. The switch wires were jammed in there, between the boards.
Driver stack:
red and green LED's, 4 wires (switch, grnd, red, green):
It's a nice switch ring - feels like SS:
Think it's an unmarked 10 pin MCU on top, a FET on the bottom board. Nothing fancy, though can't see everything on the underside of the top board, but nothing big there.
It explains why output/amps scale well with the cell.
Thin shelf at 1.0 mm, base driver is 20.5 mm, 21.6 mm where the bump outs are.
It's doable to get a replacement driver in there, I suspect. Nice that the switch is housing mounted - makes it easier.
Isn’t all that white goo hiding something?
The pillars between the two boards look nice though…
What is characteristics of the Nichia 219c’s in this flashlight?
Manker version supposedly have 4000~ Kelvins High cri version. What about this? 5000k and 80 cri?
I’m also curious of which bin 219c they used for this flashlight.
M4D M4X……are you still encouraging ppl to order this?
Tom - you beat me to the tear down pics! I was busy putting my kids to bed, but I was able to take the light apart earlier this evening. No damage really; just separated the LED- lead from the board (not hard to fix).
Interesting setup. Don’t like the thin shelf, wish it was a little thicker. Also, there wasn’t much thermal paste under the MCPCB on mine.
(I removed the USB cover before pressing the driver out.) I found that a slight “wiggle” side-to-side made it easier to remove the driver. I ended up removing the switch since the leads are so tiny. It only took a moment to free the wires.
I was able to run the light on my 18350 AWT after removing the driver spring and solder blobing the BAT+ contact. I also removed the tail spring (small “ring” in the picture above) and removed one full circumference from the bottom. This gave me enough compression and space to easily press the 18350 below the top of the open battery tube. The solder blob is relatively short, but ensures there’s no contact with the exposed driver post contacts on either side.
I am not thrilled with the light. I like the aesthetics, but I’m not a fan of the internals or UI. I don’t know that I can really live with not being able to turn the light off from anywhere in the mode sequence aside from turbo.
would a longer tube (2mm) give enough space for most unprotected cells?
If they’re anything like Amazon or GearBest, they have a lot of both paid reviews as well as reviews where people got discounts for good reviews.
That’s why I usually only trust reviews in forums, where people don’t have an incentive to be dishonest for a few bucks, since it would be a waste of their time as they typically spend hundreds of hours on their hobby.
Amazon is famous for both it’s Vine program (where they and the people using it pretend getting more free stuff in the future does not influence people) as well as it’s bots / bought reviews.
I found a good example on GearBest a few days ago where they made a mistake by using the same picture several times with different names.
Normally, people like that have a program to generate new accounts with random photos and usernames, I guess it malfunctioned.
I’m on mobile and don’t have my imgur account available because I use a password manager, so I uploaded it on Google photos, sorry for the inconvenience.
@topic: I guess this will be the light that will finally make a proper modder of me, as there is so much wrong with it 
Edit: language
Hello Guys,
First of all, thank you very much for your support all the time, besides, on behalf of banggood, deeply apologize for the inconvenience to all of you.
About the problems of S42 you mentioned above, we advice you do as follow now:
1. The tube can only works only with unprotected flat top cells, please stop testing the s42 with 18350 or the 16340 with protection, Astrolux is testing and try to find out where the problem comes from.
2. We give solutions to solve this problem within 48 hours, the S42 is temporarily off sale now, we will try our best to perfect the after-sale problem.
3. If you already ordered one but have not shippied, please don't worry, we will ship to you until the problems was sloved, send you a new S42 without any problems.
Really sorry for the trouble, we will do better in the future.Thank you for understanding!
Best Regards,
Swi
The solution is apparently to remove the driver spring and making the tail spring shorter.
Haven’t received mine yet, but i accidentally marked it as “received” on my orders page… :person_facepalming:
I'll repeat it here in this thread. I do not agree. I've dented unprotected flat top 18350 cells in my S42. It's way too tight for unprotected cells. Just do simple measurements - compress the springs to the max - see what clearance you have - it's less than 35 mm.
I never tried any protected or button top cells in mine.
The fact that the 16340 cells won’t fit length wise shows the problem. If the battery compartment is too short for a battery with a nominal length of 34mm, then you can be certain that a battery with a nominal length of 35mm will also not fit!
But the battery compartment is not too short, that driver spring just should not have been there, and the tail spring is too tall too.
This short S1 / S41 / S42 tube works fine in the Skilhunt H03 mod, and that driver also has no spring and is held in place by the battery tube (so no retainer ring).
(Same trick also works with the Nitecore HC 30 by the way.)
But does that solve everything?
Not all of us find it easy to take off the driver spring and shorten the tail spring…
To me it’s a part of the hobby, and i’m used to receiving lights that need some work, but for the average end user this may not be so.
I'm not home and can't verify - but yes, the same exact tube works fine in the S41. I know the spring(s) are smaller/softer, but not sure what other design differences there are. I seem to recall the S41 tail spring is set deeper down and is much smaller and softer, so after the solder blob was done on the driver, the S41 tailcap works on the S42 with no problem at all.
I usually lurk in this forum and post in the Reddit flashlight forum - but I bought one of these for EDC while I’m doing work for school. I’d really like to avoid having to mod it / mess with it at all. I got an 18350 battery specifically for this. Any suggestions on how to fix this if I don’t get the newer batch?
