drop in super dim, bad board or cree leds?

So I bought a drop in kit for my maglight from a fivemega group buy here. Its been a few months and I have soldered wire instead of using the springs that came on the unit. The springs were shorting and doing weird stuff. Now my question is this what led to the Cree emitters dimming, the driver getting damaged, or is this just an issue with Chinese made products? The connections are all good according to the voltmeter, and batteries connected to the module directly are also dim. And this is a problem with cheap protected 18650s and Panasonics from a laptop that are not protected.

Then my next question is can I replace whatever is causing this issue?

I just got a replacement from China and it just went bad in a day. I guess the problem is the board shorting out from bad connections. Oh well