Quick and dirty - I have a several year old g2 that I’ve had forever. originally incan, I put a P60 drop in with a XR-E in a while back. Happy with the output, but hated buying Cr123’s.
I recently bought 2 pair of rechargeable protected RCR123’ from all-battery. I find now that with more than 10-15 mins of extended use usually one of the cells will trip it’s protection circuit. The cells are usually pretty warm at this point too (not sure if that is due to heating from the drop in, or current draw.). I thought I had a bum battery.
I emailed all-battery’s support peeps, and explained it to them. They sent me a new pair of batteries, no questions asked, and didn’t want the old cells back for RMA. That brings me up to 6 cells total, and they all act the same.
I’m new to BLF, but I couldn’t find a whole lot of you guys bothering with the G2’s. I think I know why. I’d love to drop a 18650 in there but of course the ID of the body is a hair too small, and I’m not sure what the min Vin for the driver is.
I don’t want to get into driver/emitter swaps - is what I’m seeing from these RCR123’s typical, or should I invest in a couple of better cells, or switch back to alkalines?
It’s probably important what voltage the other cell is at when one of them trips. 10-15 minutes may just be the runtime if it’s an inefficient circuit driving the XR-E quite hard. But if the other still has a lot of juice left then something else would have to be going on.
voltage on the non-tripped cell is still in the 3.6v range usually. If I “wake” the tripped cell back up, it shows decent voltage too. I’m just wondering if these things are having trouble with current draw.
the 16650 would work, but I’m not sure what the operating voltage on the drop-in is. I know it’s a buck driver, and a 3.7v cell on a ~3.5vf emitter is probably going to go direct-drive immediately.
with no low voltage protection, I don’t think the cell would last long with me.
They’re Tenergy cells from www.all-battery.com. Supposedly 3.0V 900mah. They charge up to 4.2 like a standard Li-Ion though, so I doubt the 3V rating. I haven’t pulled the wrapper to see if I can find any more info.
I’ve used AB’s cells in 18650 packs for years with no issues.
I might just be expecting more out of these 123’s than they can deliver?
I use a 17650 in mine, there are a couple different manufacturers that make them. I use the cheap blue ultrafire 17650’s. I carry two cr123’s just incase of emergencies