You know m8, thats how the world is goind nowadays, there is no more IBM or GMC quality ( from 80`s)
Audi you say? Well, didnt Audi( VAG group) cheated their customers lately? tens of millions of autos with a manipulated software
You know, 6 months ago i neeed a profi boroscope for my work( to look after gears in a wind generator) so we took a professional Olimpus and just as an emergency option a 160$ ALi chinese boroscope : Olimpus costed 3800$… after 3 months of casual usage its camera diode stopped( by casual i mean 2-3 times weekly, for an hour or so)….then after 4 moths its joystick failed……yet, chinese one works perfectly
And Bosch….since i work for a construction company for the last 16 years i know what Bosch “quality” means
So lets dont talk about quality, quality is quite a relative term nowadays
what do you mean by that? Brand means brand (image/symbol/mark) Quality is quality (product). Don't mix everything.
Quality- definition:
the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something.
Let me explain you what it is all about:
Good products from honest and professional people against greedy salesmen crap (talking about nowadays business...)
You are right regarding branded goods. Things have drastically changed since last past 30 years. What used to be symbols of Quality (read>brands) have become money making machine without high quality left (empty)
WHY? PROFIT MARGIN! MORE! ALWAYS MORE,,,thus less and less quality, until we have to eat shit.
But we are already in it:
Don't ask me to accept and agree with bad quality excuses and bullshit packaging in the name of nowadays floating values...
Send a mail to ArmyTek operator... you will understand what means poor nowadays quality...
Bosch has a wide spectrum of quality most is crap. IMO household appliances are very poor but the Diesel pump on my Audi is excellent.
I think what jungle coffee is saying is that they pretend their lights are ‘Canadian’ made and of the highest quality, but both are questionable, especially reading this thread.
I sent that pic to the supplier and he double checked his stock. The stock he has in hand looks like that, all of them. It’s the entire run apparently, so it wouldn’t do me any good to return it.
The build quality and anodization is second to none on this light. The AR coated lens, again, superb. Perhaps they had outsourced the reflector and got a bad batch, didn’t catch it? Perhaps an engineer decided this surface finish would be good? I don’t know, but I’ll change it myself and know I have it working the best it can be made to work. My reasoning is, if they couldn’t get it right the first time, why should I wait for them to try getting it right a second time?
I got a Predator from a friend on the cheap, love it. So I found this Barracuda V2 with XP-L emitter on a Black Friday sale and finally got one. A lawyer once told me, “Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you!”
Wow, thats quite a different looking reflector from mine
It seems its either an old batch or a new one( a saving movey one) …. was it glued to the MCPCB or it just fell off?
On second thoughts you mentuoned even bad oxidation…well, it seems they lovered Barracuda 2 quality and those are the lastest batches
Like we bulgarians use to say: its never to late to shame yourself( “shame yourself” is the light forum revision of the original expresion :bigsmile: )
I’m up to 96Kcd from 72, but took a bit of output hit (1010.85 lumens). The beam now has a distinct and defined hot spot though, so I like it a lot better. Hand polished the lines out of the reflector. I ran a pencil top to bottom and heard the definite zip sound, like a needle scratching a record (for those of you who remember that) So I spent some time on it and it’s near mirror finished now, always difficult to get the “haze” out after polishing though.
Mitko, do you know if that apparent “pill” unscrews? Where the emitter sits? Or did you pull the mcpcb to de-dome the emitter? Or just hot de-dome it in place? Wondering how you handled it.
Thanks DB for the info. I’m disappointed in armytek becaue of your experience with the barracuda. I think you should message Armytek and see what they say. It’s pretty unacceptable.
Frankly, I don’t care what they SAY… I’ve already seen what they DO. Really tired of the lies and deception lately, high end product with a name behind em and not delivering what they promise. ArmyTek, Quartermaster knives, Volkswagen… yes, I have a 2.0L TDI and I love it, but the crap, the flat out lying to the customer, gotta stop.
I didnt played with the pill alot cause ppl who bought those 2 were rishing to get them so i used a hot air solder station to dedome the emitter on place( using a 90deg twisted scalpel), those XPLs dedome pretty okay anyway
96k is good, you should expect arround 180k after the dedoming whitch is pretty okay considering the beam profile
I tried unscrewing the pill but its either mechanicaly fixed or heavely gllued and i didnt have the time, but that topic rised my interest and this days i will open my definately- i think it will replace my m2x in the thrower collection , especialy for the glass, its actualy maybe the best ar glass out there
Dale you are actualy the only american that i know who drivers a diesel car As a 2 diesel cars owner and a huge diesel fan i salute!
Polished it some more with a different polish and am now up to 105.75Kcd for 650.3845M throw. Still domed of course and that is about all she’s gonna give me it seems.
I don’t have a hot air station, usually de-dome with the light on Turbo and looking at it through a welders lens. It’s WAAAY down in there so I’m a bit leery of tackling that. Might have to make a tool to address that pill (I filed a piece of 1/8” x 1” wide 6061 aluminum to make a key for the bezel) I’ll get there, one way or another. I’d like to get to the driver and remove the potting, see about bumping output a bit if possible.
I’ve got the 2015 Golf Sportwagen with TDi and the DSG transmission. My wife drives it to work, averages right at 39mpg. We’ve seen 51mpg on the highway. What’s not to like? The Dual Shift Gearbox automatic is an electronic manual, more or less, and shifts in 8 nanoseconds, super positive shifts. With paddles on the wheel I can manual shift it at will. The car is a solid little thing, taking corners like a pure sports car if and/or/when desired. The torque can propel you out of a high speed corner with wheel spin, even at 35-40 mph, and even with the best tires in the business. I’ve got Continental Extreme Contact DWS 225/40/18 tires on OZ Racing Wheels on it. Yep, love it, hate the hype. (about to put a cat-back Banks Monster exhaust on it and get rid of the muffler. )
I hate that for you man, I had a barracuda with a XM-L2 in it and sold it because I couldn’t get into it. The reflector was decent on it but it wasn’t buttery smooth.
I don’t want to derail the thread. But you car should be unaffected by the emmisions scandal as 2015 should have the new engine. What really bugs me is how many massively thirsty cars there are in the US and yet they seem to be shouting the loudest about the situation. I am not defending VW but here in Europe it is transpiring that this problem is not just VW but Vauxhall (GM) as well. And if that was not enough we have the new pinto with a lot of the vauxhalls as they are catching fire and trapping people inside. Vauxhall are denying there is a problem and not recalling any cars. So give me higher emissions any day.
By the way my Audi has 186000 miles on the clock and returns 56 mpg, on a rural run 68.9mpg. So don’t get down about your car I would pick a VW TDI over an F150 any day.
Mitko, I use Mother’s Billet Aluminum Polish. I do it by hand, with a newspaper. I don’t like using a Dremel as it tends to leave swirls, or that’s my experience anyway, since about 1993 when I got my first rotary tool.
I used to do a lot of work with a gunsmith friend, who taught me that the paper in a newspaper polished better than cloth. I also know that polishing should be done in alternating directions, so with the machine marks being across the direction of the light’s path I sand those lines out by crossing them, then alternate when I polish. Newspaper is also excellent for cleaning the windshield of your car.
I cheated this time, mounted the reflector in the lathe and spun it up slow, used sandpaper to cut the plating and sub plating out and worked up to a 1500 grit finish, then started the polish.
It’s fairly grueling, no doubt about it, but the end result is an extreme high polish and an index finger any proctologist would be proud of!
As a 2 diesel cars owner and a huge diesel fan i salute!
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