I went ahead and bought two different SRK clones off ebay, from two different sellers, because the prices were not bad and they both advertised USA shipping, which meant no wait time. I don't like to wait.
Here's the auction link. The seller - "chinavalley" - stated shipping in the US, so I decided it was a good enough price to try it. I also was betting on a guess, that from the photos, the light had XM-L2 leds, even though the ad stated XM-L.
Here's some photos.
So, the light arrived in Three Days! WOW. Much better than overseas. But, looky here, it's in an Amazon box. Now, what the heck is this? Amazon Prime via ebay? No lie, it was fulfilled through Amazon, but it was an ebay auction and payment was through ebay. Talk about some kind of strange deal there, but, hey, I got it in three days!
Securitylng?? Again, I have to say, REALLY?? Anyhow, let's unbox this puppy.
No actual company name anywhere, nor is there any info on where it was made. It came in this sealed box.
Inside, there are two layers of bubble wrap.
Yep, it's an SRK with the lanyard and right now I can tell it's in very nice shape. I don't see a mark anywhere. You can tell right away when you pick one up, if it's been handled carefully or not.
Looks like my luck holds, they are XM-L2 leds. That reflector is really in nice shape. No dust and no rough marks all over it. The leds are not perfectly centered, but they are not far off from it.
All in all, fit and finish are great. I have looked it over and I would say it's in excellent shape and appearance.
Ok, so it's not the three torroid driver, but I didn't expect it was. I will be removing it later on, but for now, it's just a few simple photos and the amp draws. It looks like the driver could be gotten out fairly easily, with that half round cut out on the edge of the driver. I imagine I can pry it out using that location.
Looking at the bottom contact plate.
And the tail cap is not glued down. It turned right off. I don't like the fact that there are only two screws holding the contact plate, but it's just a niggle, not a deal breaker. Time to test it and see if it works.
I tried it out with my Panasonics. The light works fine. It has H/M/L and I did not try for strobe with the double click.
With the tail cap off and the rear contact plate out, using a 20R battery, I get 6500mA on High, 3500mA on Medium and 1500mA on low.
That's reading from the back of the battery to ground.
Overall I am impressed at how clean the light was. I mean it's sparkling clean.
The things I didn't like are the two screws missing from the rear contact plate and the switch seems to be very stiff. I believe that is because they have used a small spring under the button, to keep it from depressing so easily, which was a problem for some SRKs.
I would say that if you are in the USA and want an SRK, this one is at a good price and shipping is fast, as well as the fact that you should get XM-L2 leds.
Update, with some more of the tear down.
Here's the driver. It was just press fit, not glued in place and that little half round along the edge proved to be the way to pop it right out.
I don't know if resistors can be changed or not on this driver. I imagine it depends on if the fet would take the extra amp draw. That is a fet isn't it?? Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what could be done with the driver? My solution would be 3x of the 7135 drivers as a replacement.
The reflector is very nice and it's held in the regular way, with a screw.
The leds are on a single star that sits on the shelf and look at this, the shelf screws in! I have never seen that on a SRk before. All the ones I have seen were a solid shelf.
There was plenty of thermal paste in between the star and shelf.
All the threads on this light were good. I found them to be clean and smooth. Just as good, if not better than any other SRK.
So, how will I mod it. Well, the leds will go on copper stars and I will use a copper backing plate that the stars will be soldered to and maybe a copper plate beneath the shelf, like a sandwich. The copper discs I have gotten came from Mexico, from a craft shop there. It's a little back woods shop in a very small town. I can order just about any size as long as it's metric and that works great for these Chinese lights.
Looks like the discs are made to fit, or as close as they need to. It won't be hard to fit these in the light.
If I do a modding thread, it will be separate from this thread. I will mod it and I probably will sell it. Remember, I said I got two from different members and the other one coming should have the 3 torrid driver, so I will probably keep that one and do the resistor change on it and sell this one.
Actually, I damaged one of the SS buttons the very same way.
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