In the thread about the WF-501B MC-E someone posted the following:
"I got my 501B MC-E today. It's really bright, mostly flood. It draws 2.65A on high! There was an annoying donut hole but I just unscrewed the reflector a bit and now it's not visible at all."
I tried unscrewing the reflector just a tad and the donut hole was changing. Then I screwed it back down tight and the light turned off. So I unscrewed it just a bit (maybe a quarter turn) and the light started working again.......
Sort of... Now on ALL three levels it puts out maybe 50 lumens no matter where the head is screwed. I tried a different fresh battery and the same thing. Took it apart, no apparent problems. Put it back together and it's the same way, very dim.
Any ideas? BTW this is the one I bought except I got it from the USA warehouse:
Does your emitter have the isolator disc and is it damaged? It will be a white (sometimes clear) donut made out of very thin plastic. It goes between the emitter and the reflector and is the insulator to keep the metal reflector from shorting out the solder connections on the emitter. If that disc is torn/punctured/out-of-place, I'm going to assume your driver is toast. I had that happen to me on a different model of light, but ended up with the same results.
It doesn't have an isolator disc. I also don't see the wires crushed or any evidence of a short. But it's probably a short I can't see I guess.
Is there a way to test the driver?
Anyone have a driver they suggest?
I can tell you one thing, even when this light was working normal it was nowhere near the claimed 900 lumens. Maybe 400 or so lumens I can believe. It was bright, but not "that" bright (roughly even with my Xeno E03).