The tubes aren’t interchangeable on the A6 and X6 hosts. I wonder if they made the wrong ones bare.
FYI, when I first installed the short tube for my Blue S2+, the flashlight didn’t operate right. It would intermittently go off and on.
Upon closer inspection, I discovered that the blue finishing coat had minutely bled over the edge. The amount was nearly invisible to the naked eye. In fact, it looked sufficiently “clean” that I didn’t think that it was the cause of my problems. So, I was surprised that a very light sanding of the edge of the tube (like 5 seconds with a fine grit sandpaper) restored the flashlight to 100% operation.
Just thought I’d add this tidbit of information to the group’s collective memory trove.
Just got my bare A6 shorty in the mail, and it’s the wrong threads with no o-rings. CS, here i come!
Sheesh, I will get a hold of Neal… This could be a run of bare X6 tubes…
Neal is on it, he is going to make sure the warehouse tests them first and check all those in stock…
That’s a bummer. It looks like a nice part…flat threads on the tube compared to the sharp threads on my A6 in the pics below. Sorry for quality, iPhones don’t do macro well. 
Actually, looking at the stock photo on the BG website, the pics have the same flat threads as the one i received, not the sharp V’s that are on the A6.
So no one has a working bare tube? Sigh.
Hi Gunga,
All my recently ordered 18650 A6 Bare Bodies work with the Bare 18350 tubes, BUT one of my earlier Bare A6 18650’s seems to have completely different threads, that is the Bare 18350 shorty won’t screw in more than a turn or two on both ends.
I tried it again today, just out of curiosity, as I had more Bare shorties arrive, but it would be quite long, not be waterproof, and change modes by shaking the light, so we’ll take that as a No in this case!
I’ve ordered more Bare A6 18650’s, so when they arrive I’ll try more of the Bare Shorty tubes on them.
Cheers,
Splott-Light 
In the interim you could just strip a black one with white lightening.
If they fit the X6 then hang on to them. Either you or someone else might want a bare X6 shorty.
I just took a shorty A6 to the next level, fitted it with a TIR optic for a much tighter longer throwing beam. There’s a square that looks like the die, like an aspheric, with a hot spot in the middle. I did this once before and it went from 12Kcd to 24Kcd, still need to measure this one. I’ve also got a de-domed XP-G2 S2 0D emitter under the optic, so this one should have even more throw.
:bigsmile:
Edit: Lux with this set-up is 25Kcd for 316.23M throw at start, 23.75Kcd at 30 sec with 308.22M throw. In these little lights, the 700mAh cell gets pulled down mighty fast when you’re pulling in the 5A neighborhood! lol
Code has expired. Is there a new code?
No, but it looks like the price is $4.99 now each… I believe that was the coupon price. I ordered a couple myself at that price.
Small rant:
out of curiosity, has anyone ever received a tube that is a bit, say a mm, too long instead of too short? Which would just work and not bother me at all. This contact issue is being accepted as the way it is, but that it is happening over and over again is soooo retarded!
just contributing something that another user wanted me to add. I received the BLF A6 18350 tube, and it doesn’t screw into the head of my A6. It will screw into the tailcap. Anyone else? Mine is the black one.
Actually this would be good, a little careful filing and bam! It works…
It does stink that these are being made with wide standards, but Banggood has been responsive…
RemanG are we able to buy bare battery tubes? Someone posted a pic of black head and tail with bare middle and it looks good. I’d like to pick up one for an 18650 battery if available. Thanks
Well, we don’t know that the standards are any wider than for the original flashlight heads.
I have enough A6s, the originals, to have noticed that even trying to “Lego” parts between “the same exact flashlight” turns up some tight and some loose matches.
That’s the original lights — they were pretty variable.
So variability in the short tubes combined with variability in the original heads means some just won’t Lego together.
I keep imagining a warehouse somewhere with people picking flashlight parts from huge baskets and trying one, then another, then another until they get a head, tube, and tailcap that all screw together well enough not to fall apart — that’s a good one.
Then back to the basket to try to match up three more.
Thing is each specification — if they use specs — has a range of tolerance.
But someone has to consider that putting all the pieces together is a problem if the specs are too wide.
And then apply the same thought to the specs for the components in the drivers …. shudder.
Hey, I have an idea. Let’s industrialize real fast and start building balll point pens and hoverboards and nuclear power plants.
What could possibly go wrong?
There are not 18650 bare tubes available, you would have to buy the entire bare BLF A6 light to get those. I think earlier in this thread, a couple of pages back, Djozz showed how to strip the anodizing off of the anodized tubes. That may be the best way to get a bare 18650 tube to give you the two tone look…
The only tubes here are the short ones for the 18350’s, and the bare tubes have been shipped with threads too large in some cases like mine was, Neal is making sure that no more bad ones get out.
How widespread is the problem with the bare short tubes? I haven’t seen any posts of the bare short tubes in place.