Nice review Lexel!! Weird bout the rings though. I didn't see anything that bad in 9 Q8's I received. I did though run some 2000 GRIT sandpaper over the ring, and clean with isop. alcohol on the one I fully modded so far - never know what coating or oil/grease, etc. might be left on there. Just can't trust them.
Dunno if any you guys remember, but there was a time that the ThruNite TN31 was the hot light to mod - nice big copper MCPCB. Think AlexGT wrote up a nice mod thread - resistor bypasses, dedomed XM-L2 U2 and can hit 600 kcd. Well it turned out ThruNite shipped least a full batch of them where they left the protective mylar or kapton tape stuck on the back of the copper MCPCB. The better copper MCPCB's are shipped like that, specially when it's uncoated copper to prevent oxidation. So they shipped them all nice with thermal grease, beautiful big thick copper MCPCB, but left the tape on. I was modding them for guys, and sure enough i came across a couple like that.It had to be like a wall for thermal transfer and I'm sure most buyers never noticed a thing.
Thank you for the review, very useful and gives me confidence to purchase the light in the future. Seems like one of the best products Thorfire and BLF have created. (not naming anyone because there were so many who worked extremely hard to get this finalized. Big thanks to everyone involved!)
I re-ordered one today after I canceled my original 1st batch order because of all the issues like stripped screws and the switch LED’s messing up, etc. This is based on a friend of mine who got his from the second batch recently telling me his is perfect in every way. I also read others having the same experience. I’m really looking forward to it.
I had no idea I was going to get one from the second batch. I didn’t want to take any chances I’d get one from the flawed first batch. I’m sure you understand.
My Q8 came in while I was out of town. Been playing around with it, running reclaimed Sony 18650s. Even with these cheap cells, output is very impressive. Very happy with this purchase. Thanks Q8 team!!
A user on r/flashlight sent me this - before I do any mods to my Q8, are there risks I need to be aware of? I’m searching for some threads about how to do the bypass mod you mentioned.
Interesting… still waiting for my button-top 30Qs (only got flat-tops except for a couple of protected panny-Bs), wanted to check out the light and be amazed, so just for s&g, I tried some flat-top VTC6es, and it worked!
Might not be making as solid contact as would be Strongly Preferred, but it did work.
Would be ironic if I’d polish up the contact-ring and it’d no longer work, that it was the rough spots that were making contact.
I found they work also, butt you might want to tap the bottom on the heel of your hand to see how easily the stock springs compress and lose contact, shutting off the light.
I wouldn’t use ’em in practice, if only because contact would be spotty at best, only making contact through raised rough patches on the ring, and/or compressing the shrink-tubing ’til the ring hits metal.
I just did it to play with it, test it, check out the ramping, etc. Damn it’s a bright light…
Actually, I found no signs of compression on the shrink-wrap and ran them for a good while and all 4 were basically 3.4xV showing good contact. I wouldn’t hesitate to use them as long as you are aware of the bump-in-the-night thing.