I happen to own four 4Sevens Quark AA squared lights; one regular, three tactical. All have XM-L emitters. Two tacticals are in use by my preteen sons. While I mostly use cr123a batteries, there are some AA and AAA lights around. The SOP is to use Eneloops in these lights, but the older boy ended up putting Duracell Alkalines in his Quark and, as one would expect, they leaked.
Well, I punched out the batteries, cleaned it all up, and put in some Eneloops. Seemed to work fine. Weeks later, I’m in his room and need a light. Instead of pulling one out of my pocket, I grab his Quark that is conveniently sitting there. When I hit the button, I notice that it ramps up to full power over the course of several seconds. Huh? I try the heads and tail caps from the other lights and it definitely seems to be in the one head.
Some emails to Trevor at 4Sevens and the light eventually gets shipped off to have the experts look at it. I was up front with Trevor that this wasn’t a warranty problem, so I wasn’t expecting anything other than to pay for a repair, if one was even possible.
In a very short time Trevor emailed me saying that the head was toast because of the leak and that they could sell me an XP-G head for $20 (basically 1/2 price) as there were no XM-L heads available.
Pretty reasonable, all things considered. While disappointed there were no XM-Ls to be had, at least the light is back up and working properly again.
Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks to Trevor and the 4Sevens team for helping me out.
Thanks, guys.