They are good lights right off the shelf and better when they have a good copper star and a nicer driver put in. 5 amps is not unreasonable, since they transfer heat well. Glad y'all are having fun with them.
Thatās strangeā¦ Got mine today too. But on the outside it says āXML-T6ā - and thatās whatās inside - so it seems. It is only an older XML with green top, 3 bond wires and 6 stripes. On a grey star with no other text than +/- signs on it. Letās see what the customer service has to say about thatā¦
1 From the Deal Alert thread.
Nice build for the price. It wonāt quite lock out by unscrewing the tail cap after some wear, because some aluminum shows through the anodizing on the threads. I have not opened it up.
I have to delete all my book marks to this site. Old-Lumens you just forced to buy my 6th light this month
I have read these forums for a while but never really paid attention to the ādealsā now Iām like sweet its under $20 I can get that one. Well buying 6 lights under $20 doesnāt save me money AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I need help.
Iām tempted to buy another one of these,the only thing holding me back is the first one I got from a earlier GB. The tail cap is very loose on the threads, it wobbles side to side when screwing on and the threads donāt look like they will last long. Is this normal for the F13 or did I just get a bad example?
Now that you mention it I did note mine being a bit loose as well. The tolerances could have been a little better, certainly. Once tightened up itās rock solid though. Given the high number of threads on there I canāt see it being much of an issue anyway, as theyāre not under any great strain.
Iām thinking customer service will tell you that they sourced these leds by sweeping up an old flashlight factory floor. Anything that end up in the bin at the end of the day wandered itās way into these lights
These leds are almost always terrible bins and need to be replaced so I wouldnāt worry too much about whether itās a gen1 or gen2.
Just get a nice XML2 on copper and swap it over, it will cost almost half the price of whole light but itās worth it.
For a while early on they were shipping bodies engraved with the old T6 logo, even after they started putting XM-L2 emitters in (very blue-white, as noted worth replacing anyhow).
They must have found another freight car full of the old ones somewhere, or a new cloner has started making copies of them.
Watch for the typical ānew batch cheaper and worse than the lastā progression ā since this light has become popular, itās likely being cloned.
I hope not all of Chinaās manufacturing follows this same progression.
If they do the same thing with parts for their railroads, aircraft, and power plants ā especially all those new nukes ā the worldās gonna have troubles.
And theyāll blame you, Old Lumens, when their country collapses. You! You made them do this to themselves ā¦.
The tail cap threads on mine fit better than those on most of my lights. I understand that the precision of numerical control machining is mainly limited by thermal expansion, so it gets worse as the process is sped up.
This light was already heavily cloned. (eg what we are discussing here was never the original)
This doesnāt mean that cheaper clones canāt be made but generally the process seems to bottom out. (like with the SRK) I think the F13 lights probably bottomed out a while ago.
I use duct tape on my two Yezl t9s, because they have intermittent tail switches for electronic switch drivers, but now have regular drivers. The threads are anodized but not completely. It works nicely but eventually starts getting loose. Aluminum foil epoxied on lasts longer. I have some thin copper but havenāt tried it yet. I have a couple of very cheap SK-68s that I have junked because of the tail threads.