Hello everyone I am now a registered member! I received my ebay Trustfire X9 from Hong Kong in 6 days. I received my Xtar 2600's from California (chinaqualitygoods) in 8 days haha. Well I just pulled my new Xtar 2600's off of my new Xtar wp2 ii charger, put a battery in the flashlight... and it doesnt work. How dissapointing! Now I have sprayed Deoxit gold in the switch,and cleaned all contacts and threads. I tried both batteries, one measured 4.19V the other 4.2V off of the charger... neither worked. I measured the tail amp draw and it measured 1.65a. Now I am confused, the led does not emit a single lumen of light, yet I am measuring a tail current of 1.65a. Is this even possible? is the led no good?
I alread have a nanjg 105c coming in the mail from intl outdoor, and I ordered some reverse clicky switches from manafont. I also lubed the O rings with Superlube, and after reassembling the light the lens was rattling, so I ordered a 54mm x 2mm o-ring off of ebay, thinking I could fix the rattle with that. While I was waiting for the batteries I also wrapped the reflector in a bunch of aluminum foil, because I noticed there was a huge air pocket in between the reflector and the body. I also have received arctic alumina thermal paste, and arctic alumina epoxy, that I was planning to use when swapping the driver.
So should I try and get a refund/replacement for this light? I was all set to mod it and let it rip!
On a side note I could not believe how thick the spacer is in the tailcap, I know I would have to sand that down in order to use the nanjg 105c driver, also i did not realize at first that the silver end piece on the tail cap unscrews also!
To me it sound like the driver may be shorting out. I highly doubt there is anything wrong with the LED itself. You could just unsolder the wires going to the LED (on the PCB/mounting plate itself) and briefly connect the LED direct to the battery to see if it lights up.
Careful on turning on and having no light. Some drivers are not meant to be operating with no load. Anyway 1.65A at the tail = heat if there is no light. For testing within 0.5s it should be ok.
Hey thanks for the great idea! I managed to desolder the driver from the pill before I left for work, I didn’t see anything wrong with the drver in that quick look, when I get home in the morning I will desolder the wires from the driver and connect them to the battery, I may need to temporarily solder some extension wires to the wires coming off of the led, I hope the led isn’t fried! If the LED does indeed work, I will hook the driver back up and give it another shot, at least my nanjg 105c should be here any day, according to intl outdoor it shipped on Feb. 20th.
Also, I can’t believe how thick the lens on this flashlight is! It has to be at least 1/4" thick! Is that necessary?? I wouldn’t think the led having to shine thru a piece of 1/4" glass would be a good thing.
You seem to have a DMM since you can measure the tailcap current. It should have a setting for diode testing, so you can test the LED basically without additional soldering/desoldering. Just hold the probes to the positve/negative solder points on the LED's PCB and the LED should glow dimly indicating that it is principally working. If it glows the problem is most likely in the driver.
Thank you for the great advice! I have a $10 dmm from harborfreight, hopefully it has the diode testing setting, I will check in the morning! Hopefully the problem is the driver, since I already have a replacement on the way! If it is the driver, maybe I will try to figure out how to mod the driver to direct drive until the replacement arrives in the mail… hmm
Thanks again for all of your help!
Oh and thanks for the warm welcome! There is actually a swedish retirement center a few blocks from my house called “Valkommen Plaza” I’ve worked security there a few times haha
1/4"? That sounds like allot to me, mine has a measured lens thickness of 3.0mm (~1/8") which is about right for optical performance and strength.
I also replaced the standard driver with a Nanjg 105C and accidentally solidered it to direct drive (negative on the circuit board was not where I thought) and I got around 4.5A at the tail off a Sanyo 2600mAh (laptop pull) which is I believe the same type of battery used by Xtar?
4.8a wow! Maybe I don’t want to run it direct drive, altho I’m sure it would be nice to have a 30 minute hand warmer out in this cold weather! Haha! Ill have to measure the lens thickness, I may very well be wrong
Alright I tested the led with my dmm and it did glow! woo! Thank y'all for all of the help! Oh and the ebay seller emailed me saying they will be sending me a replacement X9 on Monday, and I don't have to return the broken X9! Excellent!
A full short circuit would shut down your battery....or blow it up.
It could be at any point after the battery plus end. Driver or insulation on red wire from driver to LED is best bet. Current is leaking back to ground before it lights up the LED.
Thank you for your help! It must be the driver, my dmm will make the led glow by touching the leds to the wires that I desoldered from the driver, and I did unscrew and pry off the led board and visually inspected the wires, they appear fine, I’m just waiting for the new driver, it was marked shipped exactly 3 weeks ago today!
well i got the nanjg105c in the mail yesterday, i soldered it on this morning, and now my flashlight works, i accidentally soldered it to run direct drive though, oops! I soldered the positive wire onto the driver fine, but I was having a hard time with the negative wire. I soldered it on, then soldered the driver to the pill, and the flashlight worked, with 3 modes, since i soldered the star the 3rd from the left on the driver. Well i didnt feel confident that the negative wire was soldered securely, so i removed the driver from the pill, and as i removed the driver the negative wire popped off, and I really had a hard time getting it reattached, once i did get it soldered securely i soldered the driver back to the pill, tested out the flashlight and it was only 1 mode, and that one mode appeared to be brighter than the high mode when the driver was running in 3 mode. Within a few minutes of being on, the flashlight is warm from bezel to tailcap, and at 5 minutes, the area just below the cooling fins feels hot, but not too hot to touch, after being on for 8 minutes, the flashlight was almost too hot to touch, and I was worried about the battery roasting in there, so I pulled the battery out and it suprisingly only felt slightly warm, I even touched it to my cheek and it still felt only slightly warm. So now im not really worried about the battery getting too hot, im more worried about the led itself runnning too hot. I already ordered the kd 8x7135 driver, I hear that one is easier to solder. So my X9 wont be running direct drive forever.
Oh and another thing, after shaving off enough of the tailcap spacer to make room for the xtar 18700, the clicky wasnt working properly. I had to take off the rubber tailcap boot, and cut off the little nipple on the inside of it, that was meant to press down on the clicky switch. the switch was now poking out of the bottom of the flashlight more, and that nipple on the rubber boot was preventing the switch from clicking properly. Works fine now though.
well its 50 degrees F outside with a 20 MPH wind, and i walked around outside with the X9 blasting for 15 minutes straight, and it never even got warm! This is a great flashlight, it had me thinking that the batteries in my 4D mag-led must be dead haha. I am now wanting a flashlight with a longer throw though, something with more reach.