Solder on the lower springs feels solid. No cracks… I emailed Dale tonight. I wait until I hear from him. In the meantime I’ll play with the others that seems to be okay.
We had a very brief conversation earlier and I may have misheard him but I do believe he said that he would be returning to the factory tomorrow.
Now please do't hold me to that but if I did not hear him correctly it sure did sound like he said that. Of course at the time I was telling him that we have some of these under-powered drivers popping up so he was a little annoyed at the time.
I can't possibly say what exactly happened with those. I know what was supposed to happen and that is they were to be pulled from all production. But, dale had been away for at least a couple of weeks right before the beginning of the Spring Festival. He returned to the factory just about long enough to be sure that the group buy orders got processed and shipped and then it was time to shut down for the holiday.
It really could be as simple as workers are the same the world over and without the big dogs there some decided it really did not matter that much... Now I have no way at all to prove that to be a fact of any kind it is only one possibility of hundreds.
Either way none of those drivers were to have gone into any production light.
I gave my word that if it happened that I would help in every way possible to help get it corrected and that is exactly what I will be doing.
Almost forgot... Checking the spring on the board is always a good idea. I have found several over the years that just needed a little more solder. But it it's for sure not a cure all...
Those bad drivers has to go to a storage area for blocked stock. At this storage area only a few peoples has the ability to take items from it. That what I know from production. Its the management of a company which has to ensure that blocked items can not be used for production.
But by the way. We will see if thats only some flashligts or if thats all 35er flashlights which has this issue with much underpowered driver. In this thread we heard only about a few flashligts that arrived.
I hope we can find a solution, as you said, that everyone will be happy with his flashlight.
Double check your junk and spam folders and if you still do not see a reply from Dale please email him again at haikelite@yeah.net
I will also email him ans let him know that you will be emailing him and send him your username here on BLF.
I am pretty sure that I remember hearing him say he was returning to work tomorrow but there was a lot going on in my shop and where he was at the time do I could have misheard him.
I can almost guarantee you that it is only the 35 high version that there was a driver change. The first ones were ordered just as they should have been and it was caught and production was stopped which is why it took some extra time to get the group buy orders our and also why it has taken me until sometime after while before I even get my first shipment of them. It seemed to be the more fair thing to do letting all of the group buy members get their orders filled before I got mine.
I can tell you for a fact that Dale is not happy at all that any of those drivers ever left the factory. And even more annoyed that one so far that we know of ended up in the group buy orders.
The 70.2 drivers are solid and right.
I just hope that no one else gets another 35 high light with one of those drivers.
I can only apologize on behalf of Haikelite for this having happened. Rest assured that it will be made right. Anyone that got a 35 high from the group buy will get what they paid for even if that means swapping out the driver. Dale and I are both in complete agreement on this matter.
I checked this in the past and today again.
No Mail.
Last Mail was from Dale, with question, if I can accept the new blue color.
Last Mail form me to Dale was at February 22th.
I think at this time he was still in CNY.
I´ll wait until end of the week and than contact him again.
Thank you for the reply! I checked the springs and all looks good, no cracks or anything out of order that I can see. Batteries are free of residue and clean of all the sticky that was on them from the little protective stickers. What I am finding is that when tightening the tail cap it is very tight as if the battery tube is too short for the batteries (when no batteries are in the carrier tail cap screws on nicely). The tail cap is putting a lot of pressure on the batteries and seems to compress the springs completely when tightened. All I know is that when the cap is tightened all the way the light will not turn on, just the quick flash, loosen the cap and the flashlight works. Not sure how well it works but it does. I have not had much time to play with it but I can say that so far I am not impressed.
May be a silly question… are you aware about the pin alignment in the tail cap? That the pins are different sizes and must be manually (painfully tediously) aligned for the cap to screw on all the way? Took me a while to figure out that they don’t auto-align like some devices do, but have to be visually lined up as best as possible with the cap off, then carefully closed to insure the pins are going into the specific holes. When I miss it, mine does like what your describing - cap starts to screw on, then quickly hits a roadblock, which is the pins pressing into something rather than descending into their holes. There may be incidental or incorrect battery contact, which may be why the light flashes momentarily.
Just checking.
Not silly but yes I am aware of the whole pin thing and I agree that it can be a little tedious and I did pull the cap off many times to check that I didn’t do something wrong before I decided to loosen the cap and try to turn it on.
First impressions so far are great, the green color looks gorgeous in person and the body doesnt feel too big at all even if its a big chunky host i think it feels very sturdy and nice in hand. The tailcap was a bit loose when i opened it up but light has no damage or scratches so thats good. Batteries were protected with plastic around them so no chance of light accidently turning on. gonna charge them and see later.
I think this will be one of my favourite lights and i hope its gonna be more powerful then my convoy l6.
I just ran a test on the included VTC6 button top batteries and confirmed that these are the real deal. Here are the capacity measurements for all four on my Xtar Dragon VP4 Plus 3175, 3206, 3220, 3188 mah. I also did lux measurements using my high drain flashlights and confirmed that these are the real ones as they provide brighter output than running on the Panasonic/Sanyo NCR18650GA 10A batteries and same as my other VTC6 batteries bought from reputable stores.
The included batteries and the $10 charger is one of the main reason that made this GB an unbelievably good deal. Just the authentic VTC6 batteries alone are already worth about $40 shipped.
I didn’t have to sign for mine and it came from NL as well, pretty random I guess. Maybe if I had to sign for it I would have a nice green working light rather than the paperweight I have sitting here now.
