Ultrafire fakes, opened up and refunded !

It's good to have you here, mihu!

Aloha and welcome to BLF mihu!

After the above, it is risky to buy cheap batteries.
For somebody who want to pay under 10 usd for a pair of 18650’s, which is the best option?

http://www.kaidomain.com/product/details.S009747
This I guess… Although it’s a bit over $10/pair.

Those are unprotected, right?

For $13.50 you'll get a pair of known good protected XTAR 18700 2600mAh (the group buy is "over", but Serena still sells to that price. I just bought four more pairs - and received them in seven days!

I second that!

I actually think these are the best battery on the market right now! Yes I know Panasonic have a 3100 cell but they are double the price and not double the capacity. I have the same Sanyo’s bought from Kaidomain and they are brilliant. I quite like my Trustfire flames but where my TF flames will put out 2A the Sanyo’s give 2.5A. Makes a big difference.

One other thing I would not worry about them being unprotected they are a very good cell, very safe.

Marc.

Same old story..^^

Yeah, those are just the bare cell.

17670?

I sell Panasonic 18650’s after struggling with Chinese clones.

The 3rd cell in post #3 is a 2400mah Sony cell (#6 looks like Sony 2200mah).

I only use U.L. listed “brand name” cells for reliability.

U.L. #1642 assures a quality cell manufacturer.

LarryDFW

A couple of months ago, I bought some silver/gray ultrafire 14500s. Not only were they too long (the plastic wrapper barely covered the neg ends), but they were too big in circumference. After the usual haggling of “you send pictures” and “you return batteries,” the seller refunded my money. Soon after ALL silver/gray ultrafires disappeared from his ebay ads.

So curious, I too attacked the battery with an xacto. What did I find inside the wrapper? The usual protection circuit and mini pcb attached to ANOTHER complete Ultrafire silver/gray 14500!!! I peeled off the PCB and end tabs, leaving a “normal” silver/gray ultafire 14500, that worked! (as well as those 14500 UFs ever do). So the reason for the oversize? They had sent the thing through the “protection” and wrapper machine TWICE. Talk about NO quality control! I have stripped probably 7-10 dead (or otherwise funky) 14500s, and there were no markings on the metal casing at all.

I haven’t bought the cheap red 18650 Ultrafires for a couple years …. because the 20 first ones I bought (before I knew better) still work fine and hold their own against even Sanyos and Panasonics and the TF flamers. Yeah, they might run a little shorter and a little less voltage wise, but ones I have work fine for what they are. I check the voltages from time to time and for heat while charging (none) and they seem to still be working just fine. HOWEVER, friends have bought those red UF cheepies with stated outputs HIGHER than 3000 mah (usually 3500 on the wrapper, but I have seen 4000mah) and those were definitely fakes. DOA or unchargeable. Combine those dead fakes with a fully topped-off 18650 in a 2-cell light, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Would I buy the UF cheepies again? Probably not. But mine have worked as expected for a cheep battery.

I have always believed that all XXXXfire batteries are fake… You cant never know what is inside… In any of those brands…

I had a couple of crap 18650 Ultrafires off eBay as an experiment a year or so ago. Terrible internal resistance and no more than 1000mAh capacity so I got my money back. The other week I decided to see what was inside. Left it overnight in a bucket of weak salt water, then ripped off the +ve end. Disappointingly, there was no Russian doll battery inside, just the normal (I guess) spiral wound layers. Guess it was just a QC reject off a production line.

This applies to everyone not just you, but it is not a good idea to disassemble lion batteries. 1000mah could not fit in a tiny lipo like other posters discovered. It tells you it is a real battery and could be dangerous to disassemble.

I know, you’re right. That’s why I completely discharged it in salt water overnight. The cell read 0V on my DMM afterwards and shorting the +ve and -ve terminals didn’t even elicit a spark. Electrically it was dead at that point :slight_smile:

Oh! Now I understand the salt water part. While it may have been electrically dead it wasn't chemically dead and still has all the nasty chemicals.

also true, that’s why I wore nitrile gloves and wore eye protection :slight_smile:

All very good points though. I just read the other day a thread on CPF about a guy whose CR123 light blew up and gave him hydrofluoric acid poisoning. HF was just about the nastiest scariest chemical we had in the lab until we disposed of it - I’d rather dip my hands in broken glass soaking in radioactive bacteria than go anywhere near that.

But HF is produced only when cell vent with fire. No fire, no HF

I used HF in a lab as well, i triple extra washed everything (and wore gloves), yet an aluminum sample continued etching overnight due to HF exposure that i apparently didn’t properly remove.

the ones with rif20r are sony 17670 cells.
mine are us17670gr g3.
rather old so probably recycled.
why not just call em “recycledfire”