A real teardown will have to wait (I want to know if the ledboard looks any different from proto3, did they have a new type made after the delamination issue was found?), but here's my initial findings.
Out of the box output in djozz-lumen, I did wipe the contact area's of battery tube and driver cleam with a tissue:
with charged 30Q's:
3 seconds: 5400 lm
30 seconds: 5220 lm
with Panny BD (lower drain but still powerful):
30 seconds: 4780 lm
After cleaning up some stuff under the switch-board and swapping driver screws (I killed a driver screw while screwing it out):
with charged 30Q's:
3 seconds: 5560 lm
30 seconds: 5280 lm
(after some recent checks with reliable sources I believe that my djozz-lumen is about 9% high. But it still seems lower than most calibrations found on BLF and CPF, and what flashlight manufacturers list as ANSI -measured output of their flashlights)
Here's some pictures:
The tailboard screws look ok:
The earlier reported stuff in the screw-threads:
Some of that stuff is in between tailboard and body. I removed it and screwed down the tailboard really tight.
The driver screws look fine but are soft as butter, one was demolished while screwing it out with a well-fitting screwdriver.
I changed out the screws with a couple that I found in my box of screwy thingies:
The driver looks good, notice the 7135 with 'claw' mark.
The leds are more off-center than needed, you can see that the centering suffered from twisting the reflector. The beam is good though. But I will center the leds better when opening up the light in the near future.
Preliminary conclusion:
The production light is very close to the proto3, which is good. Wished that Thorfire was less sloppy with screws and screwdrivers, I don't really get that when they make a nice product like the Q8. But the performance of my copy is fine, also out of the box, nothing to complain about that, a 3.5% output drop in 30 seconds in a 5000 lumen soda-can-size light is a sign of a very very good heat path. And if I would not have opened up everything, the screws would not be an issue.
Now on to a busy weekend....