It was purchased from Mountain Electronics early this year (it was a late Christmas present) and I use Panasonic batteries in it. I mainly use it for a helmet light set on high when I ride my bicycle, and it works great for that. The problem is that sometimes it will be days since it’s last use, and when I use it the mode will change to the next setting (the strobe). Other times it will be days between uses and it will turn on to the high setting as desired. It’s a 5 mode flashlight and the first mode is low. Is there something wrong with the light? Am I doing something wrong? I’ve got a couple of other multimode lights and don’t have this problem with them.
No idea there! I do have an L4 tho sorry
I presume it has “on time” memory. Perhaps it wasn’t on long enough the last time it was on to remember it’s mode (>5 sec)?
It can be days between uses when this happens.
Doesn’t matter how long it is off. The mode is only remembered if, when the last time the light was “on”, it was “on” the mode you want for over 5 seconds.
It’s usually on for about half an hour when I use it, way more than 5 seconds.
When I do have this problem I usually will briefly (less than 5 seconds) advance through the modes until it is 1 short of the desired mode and then it will be in the correct mode when I turn it on. Which isn’t always right after shifting through the other modes.
It sounds exactly like what Halo is talking about.
Set the light on the desired mode. Wait for more than 5s. Turn the light off. Check if now it comes on in the same mode or the next one.
The problem originally occurs after I’ve used the light for about half an hour (way more than 5 seconds) on high and then turned the light off. I usually charge the battery before the light it used again and don’t think I’m pressing the switch for more than 5 seconds when changing the battery. Most of the time the light comes back on the high setting, but it will come on strobe (the next setting in the progression) often enough to annoy me and others around me who weren’t expecting the strobe setting. While operator error sounds like a likely cause of the problem, I’m not seeing how or when it would happen.
Could a loose tail cap switch cause the problem?
If it’s a convoy it has a nanjg driver so it should be able to change in the no blinks group…
Is there a blink in the low mode after few seconds? If yes, just do a half press after the blink and it will change the mode group.
If not you can select the modegroup with the stars on the bottom of the driver.
One thought — make sure to clean the threads at head and tail, and look hard at the spring and contacts on the battery.
Especially look to see if there’s any scrape or score dug out by the end of the spring onto the battery surface.
If there’s any dirt on any of the contact points, clean those and add a little “Nyogel” or other conductive lubricant.
If the cut end of the spring where it contacts the battery is sticking out, tweak it so the last arc of spring wire is parallel to the battery surface — to maximize contact area.
Springs get slightly cocked off-axis just from changing batteries, the wire can move sligtly over time so the contact point is small, then it either does or doesn’t make good contact.
Especially if it’s gouged the surface of the battery, that contact can every time you change batteries.
At that point, if there’s anything imperfect about the contacts, any little bounce (and especially with any dirt) can make contact intermittent when you power it on.
Then you’d get a mode change.
Conductive lube dabbed on the spring ends helps.
Do you have the 2mode group driver? You could switch to group 1 with no flashies.
try what hank said
I had this problem for a very long time and doing what he told usually fix such problems
I would like to add since hank didn’t say
Tighten your light up. It could be loose retaining ring on the switch or driver board
In my case it got loose because I left my light on high for too long and when it cools down it kinda loosened the retaining ring
Things looked clean when I got it, and I haven’t used it all that much since getting it. One of my other lights would skip ahead to the next mode after hitting a bump, and this one doesn’t. This one has the 5 mode settings, group 2 settings and I want to keep the strobe. I just don’t want to come on when I want high instead.
The two biggest issues I have with budget lights are retaining rings coming loose and crummy contacts. Steel wool is your friend for budget lights. A quick wipe with isopropol followed by aggressive cleaning with steel wool and a good coat of lube fixed several of my budget lights. I do have a wf504 that the retaining ring keeps coming loose every time I replace the battery so I have learned to check them every time.