I have two C01s, red in CW, and blue in WW. My red was lost for a bit and was recently found
But the red doesn’t work consistently. I cleaned the board and contact ring in the body, and that improved it a bit, but its still glitchy. I found the red head on the blue body works great, and the red head on the blue body works great. Just the red head on the red body is still glitchy. I’m thinking the red body needs some more attention likely.
Anyone have similar experiences with glitchy C01? By glitchy, I mean to get it to turn on I need to tighten it down (not hard, just snug), then loosen it a tiny bit to get the light on, and then it doesn’t stay on necessarily, or drops out if touched. Or sometimes it works just fine, others it won’t turn on at all.
I have something similar with a C01R, but i realised i stole the battery from a Lumintop EDC01 which was doing the same thing so it might be something to do with the battery, but i’m not sure what yet.
As i assume you kept the batteries in the same tubes when you swapped them, effectively swapping which head went with which battery as well as which tube, can you swap the batteries between the red and blue C01s and see if the problems persists with the red?
> to get it to turn on I need to tighten it down (not hard, just snug), then loosen it a tiny bit to get the light on
I have not had that experience, hope you solve it, even if it means running a red head on a blue body.
when I have weird operation from a twisty, I wipe off all the lubricant and try again. If that does not solve the problem with your red body, I would get a bit of fine emery paper, and polish the shiny shelf in the body, that the pill is supposed to make contact with.
and btw, I avoid using dielectric grease, the type intended to seal water out of car tail light bulbs. dielectric grease blocks conductivity.
Yes, I did rule out the battery by swapping different batteries into the light. Same behavior.
I haven’t tried removing lube yet explicitly, but I did take a swab and alcohol to the contact ring on the tube, as well as the driver. I inadvertently removed most of the soldermask from the driver, so I’m thinking its likely pretty clean. I may need to work harder at the contact ring on the tube though.
Current state is the driver for both work, but the red one only works reliably in the blue tube.
I also have a Ti3 that is pretty intermittent, but that’ll be a different thread . . .
Are the two tube contact traces on the driver still intact? Even when new only the very outside edge of those traces is involved with battery tube contact, I always thought that would become a weak spot.
another variable to eliminate is the O ring
swap the red and blue head rings and see if there is a change
the Ti3, same answers, remove all lubricant, dont use dielectric, and verify the O ring is not too worn down, allowing excess head wobble
here I demonstrate intentional intermittency on an E01. This is caused by the head not being fully tight. The head wobbles a bit, which turns the light on and off.
C01 has the same feature
this sort of wobble has also caused me to lose charge on a twisty aaa light in my pocket. I noticed when bending down that my pocket was shining… it was the same sort of intermittent contact. It is one of the reasons I stopped carrying twisties.
indeed, but I think of the ability to squeeze the light and get it on as a “feature”. Pretty easy to lock out also with a full turn. but I agree, it can be anoying.
Take a caliper and measure the depth of the contact in the battery tube and the length of the thread in the head for both lights. I presume the C01 design does not correctly reflect tolerances(*) in manufacturing. If that’s the case, solder on the contacts pads might solve that problem.
(*) I have one C01 that barely takes a battery. It is so tight in the battery tube that I have problems to get it out.
I also got a few pcs C01 when it was available, and like in your case, I got 1 C01, where the body (battery) tube is so tight, that if I insert (or push) the battery, the battery won’t easily get out (I need to use a needle-nose pliers to grab the button-top of the battery to pull it out). Anyway, I ‘complained’ it to Sofirn back then about the problem, and asked for a replacement tube, which was sent to me on my next order (only the C01 battery tube) — which fixed the problem.
I had the blue head on the red tube and vice versa for a couple days. I tried both lights today, and both were glitchy!
I finally listened to Jon’s advice, albeit with a paper towel, not emery paper. I was pretty convinced that it was some sort of contamination (grease, or?) that was getting moved around. I also think the alkileak AAA was a contributor, as after the first cleaning the blue light with the alkileak was still a bit glitchy, so a second cleaning and putting a another eneloop in (for now) seems to have solved the problem. Both lights worked perfectly since I originally received them, so I was pretty sure the light electronics were fine. If things change I’ll report back, but for now I’m considering case closed.
