Oh, and are the 3.0V RCR123s safe for a Streamlight TL2LED?
don't bother trying.
what's happening is this:
lamps designed for use with 2xCR123s in mind have a target voltage with the voltage sag of those cells in mind. at ~1amp, (region of most lamps for these lights) CR123s deliver about 2.5V each. So they make a 5V lamp. Problem is.. those rechargable "3.0V" cells, are actually 3.7V cells, with a voltage regulator built in. The regulator tries to pull the voltage down to ~3V... they don't replicate the behavior of CR123s, they just try to come close for other electronics, many devices, (like a camera) are often not as sensative to this difference. In reality, many of those "3.0V" cells will actually deliver ~3.2V per cell under a ~1amp load. So a lamp designed for 5V, is seeing 6.4V instead. The result it that the ~25 hour life rating at 5V, drops to about 1 hour at 6.4V, and whenever a lamp re-rates below about 10 hours, it's in instaflash territory on startup.
the other problem is that, the voltage regulators built into these cells are very inefficiant. about 20-40% of the power the cell is delivering is wasted as heat... which is a problem all by iteself; li-ion cells are sensative to heat. wrap em up in a heat generating flashlight, and you have a recipe for disaster.
So basically, when dealing with flashlights, my personal recomendation is to avoid "3.0V" rechargable li-ion cells at all costs. They just don't provide a good solution, there aren't any incandecent lamps available for tactical flashlights that are optimized for them.
click on the link in my signature... and then choose a configuration. If you have any other configuration questions feel free to ask around here, I'll do what I can
