Sure Fire Batteries

L

Lurp

Joined
Jul 15, 2005
Messages
493
I have a Sure Fire 6p and i love this little light! I recentley purchased the P61 lamp and its great. I have been running my light on the original SF 3v lithium cells it came with and they have lasted a long time. So the other day i got curious as to what this thing could do with a fresh set of batteries as mine are probably 2/3 full. I put in a fresh set of Battery station batteries only to find that they are not nearly as bright as my used Sure Fire batteries! Their was a HUGE difference in the output. The Sure Fire batteries made a large white blindly light while the Battery Station batteries made a dull yellow light now where near in comparision to the SF...Has anyone else noticed this? I am kind of upset cause i bought like 10 of the battery station batteries.
 
The battery station batteries are ALL bad? That is very strange. I have never ordered from them but I assumed (and saw runtime graphs I believe) that they were functionally equivalent to the Surefire ones. Why don't you send an email or phone call to battery station? You must have gotten a bad batch or something...

Or maybe the battery station ones are not made for such a high drain as a p61 lamp. Try them with the p60 and see if there is a difference there.
 
I to have see the chart your talking about and found it wierd when it happened...ill give the p60 lamp a try and see how it goes.

And yes they are ALL bad because i tried 3 different sets of them and got the same results.
 
I tried it with my p60 lamp in my 6p and ther seems to be a less significant difference. On a fresh set of SureFires i can notice a tiny difference but on the p61 lamp ther is a HUGE output difference....Well looks like SureFire will have my battery money from now on...
 
I've used Battery Station 123 Batts for a long time and also the SF.
The BS are indistinguishable from the SF if light output.

I just received 100 Surefire Batts from The Product Wizard. Great prices
http://productwizard.com/

I bought the SF because of the runtime results in the CPF link above.
There should have been NO discrenible difference in light output with the BS vs SF batts.
Did you try other batts from the 10 lot you have?
Tom
 
I tried 6 out of the 10 with the same results on the p61 lamp, but on the p60 lamp it was pretty much the same output. The light output came into play only when i used the p61 lamp. its wierd...
 
search candlepowerforums....or ask there. They have some flashlight freaks there! :D :thumbup:
 
It's possible it's just a bad batch. You could give BatteryStation a call and ask what's up.

Personally speaking, I have some BS batteries, and reserve them for use in LED lights that have low drain requirements. For my high drain SF lights (M2, M3, M6), it's only SF123As.
 
I get the same impression with my old Daily Power 123's that I got from arc a long time ago.
I use these in my LED lights and use the Titanium brand 123's on my incan SF's.
 
I bought the Surefire 123s as they were the cheapest avaible to travel to Nigeria. The cost of alternatives are scary in South Africa, Botswana and Nigeria $5-$7/battery, with your dialogue the SF batteries is more than marketing and will go back and stock up properly. The price of the alternatives was why stuck soley with Maglite as AA/AAA and Ds are available virtually any where.

Tim
 
As a control factor to possibly eliminate your light as a possible culprit, try the batteries in another flashlite. I have no explanation for this. But it has occurred to a friend of mine where the bulb(s)/ flashlite were the problem! :eek:

N.
 
Nakano 2 said:
As a control factor to possibly eliminate your light as a possible culprit, try the batteries in another flashlite. I have no explanation for this. But it has occurred to a friend of mine where the bulb(s)/ flashlite were the problem! :eek:

N.
Click to expand...

I know it's either the bulb or the light itself. Problem is, what's my next step?
 
I'm CY on candlepower forums with 5,000+ posts.

have used loads of surefire and battstation CR123 cells. they both are excellent cells with surefire having slightly more capacity than batt station cells.

give Kevin at Batt station a call, they have excellent customer service.

almost don't use CR123's anymore. R123 li-ion cells are cheap and readily available. mostly used in high end Luxeon lights.
 
CY_ said:
I'm CY on candlepower forums with 5,000+ posts.

have used loads of surefire and battstation CR123 cells. they both are excellent cells with surefire having slightly more capacity than batt station cells.

give Kevin at Batt station a call, they have excellent customer service.

almost don't use CR123's anymore. R123 li-ion cells are cheap and readily available. mostly used in high end Luxeon lights.
Click to expand...

I though most R123's have higher voltage that could damage incan bulbs. I see some online that say 3V instead of 3.6 V? Are there any that are safe to use as direct replacements in incan lamps?

Will
 
I would try them in another flashlight but i dont have acess to another flashlight that takes CR123's right now. Maybe ill give Battery Station a call tomorow and see what they think.
 
there's several veriations of R123 li-ion cells. most from china are bare cells.

fully charged at 4.2V and depleted at 3V. but almost no capactity left at 3.5V.

li-ion requires special handling due to low internal resistance will discharge at extremely high rates. small R123 will discharge at 20+ amps. if used in series and one cell goes dead. others will reverse charge possibly causing a fire and/or explosion.

further li-ion cells don't have a peak during charging, but will continue to accept charge long as current is delivered.
somewhere over 4.5V therma-runaway could occur resulting in venting with flames.

recommend protected li-ion cells, if your are going to use em. very tricky to mate li-ion cell to incand bulbs. most incand like surefire are driven to edge just before burnout. slightly overdriving an overdriven bulb will flash bulb. possibly causing a mess in proccess.

answer is regulated incand which is few and far inbetween. Surefire A2 is one of few regulated incand made with soft-startup and brite white light. A modder on cpf named JS has made the M6R regulated pack for Surefire M6. 20 minutes of guilt free 600+ lumens :D

m6 ppk newt.JPG
 
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