Ordered a pair (1 black & 1 silver) on Dec 11th. DD shipped it Dec 13th. Left China Dec 21st. Arrived in Canada Jan 8th. Canada customs released it on Jan 14th and arrived today, Jan 16th. This is the longest I had to wait for a shipment from DD but as you can tell, it's at no fault of DD. China Post & Canada Post/Customs had my flashlights for 33 of the 36 days from day of order. I guess that's what you have to put up with for ordering it during the holidays.
Silver 504 came with a 3 mode (H-L-Strobe), while the black 504 had a 5 mode (H-M-L-Strobe-SOS) in it. These were supposed to be gifts for 2 of my friends that are boaters and the lack of SOS mode on one of the emitter made this flashlight useless. I guess they'll have to do morse code using the their other hand covering the lense.
Besides sending me a 3 mode for a 5 mode flashlight, I'm otherwise happy.
I ended up swaping out a 5mode drop in from my wife's L2 that i got her last year. She uses it for walking the dog and prefers fewer modes as I learned today. Win-win.
When I have some time I'll see if I can modd up a 2 mode for her. A high and low.
Unfortunately the tailcap (or at least I think it did) broke after a few weeks. Every couple of mm's I push the switch I hear a clicking sound, much fainter than the final 'on' click which I still get. Then the light flashes for about a second before going to the lowest mode. Any attempted mode change will only repeat this.
Does this sound like a broken tailswitch to anyone. A 4mm triangular piece of metal with rounded corners and a golden circle in the middle fell out when changing the battery just after this started happening. I can't seem to unscrew anything inside the tailcap so I don't see how it could be repaired. Can you buy just the tailcap anywhere for this model?
The C1 tail cap will work it's the same except it's a slightly different color but the internals are identical.
I got mine and ripped the driver out immediately and made it direct drive one mode for a weapon light. It draws 4+ amps on high then settles to around 3.8 after a minute or so, no smoke or dedomed emitter. I was really trying to burn it up but the emitter is decent quality and it pumps out some serious light at 4 amps.
It does seam odd I have six 504Bs and none of them had problems but the one C1 I bought from DD had a bad tail switch and they have the same internals so it is possible.
Do 504b's vary in quality? Obviously loose QC means some individual lights will be better put together than others, but I mean are they known to come from different manufaturers, like the Sipik 68 clones? Is any particular seller known to provide more reliable ones?
I unscrewed it as directed but I cannot see anywhere the piece of metal may have slipped. I'm hesitant as to removing the black part as I haven't soldered for around 15 years, so I'd need to find everything before I could reattach it.
Edit: Since the head of the torch seems to be attached to the barrel this is the best I can do
I'm starting to think you are right, though I cannot think of anything else it could have come from. Also, having reassembled the tailcap without cleaning anything, all the modes seem to be back. As everything was already screwed down tightly I have trouble seeing as to how it fixed it, but it did.
Unfortunately, DD already sent out a replacement torch 6 days ago which means, if the original order is anything to go on, I should receive it in 3 days. It would cost more than the torch is worth to send it back so I suppose I'll have to recompense DD in the future with purchases.
Thanks again, which is the second time in one day, for helping me fix a seemingly broken torch. Now that I've seen how easily they come apart without anything catastrophic happening I'm starting to get curious.......