Brand new P61 bulbs burned out continuously

[chillinn]

Interesting that Z57 must have had a dead short

That's really possible? I really thought it was a bad batch of lamps. fivemega spoke of things that made me think... had to be the lamps. I'm not even sure what made me suspect the tail... oh, right, it had happened with it twice before. that is why I got the replacements. But it did not blow Tad Customs lamps, only that string of MN03.

 

[Kestrel]

I kinda wonder sometime; the OP says that two P61's (on which he specifically reiterated) didn't last long on two Surefire CR123's (on which he specifically reiterated), and people start asking if he ran P30's or LiIons. :shakehead

I'm no incan expert, but the problems were obviously related to the long-term integrity of the bulb envelopes; the LA's were most likely new-old-stock, & could easily have been 10-15+ yrs old.

If a poster is being that specific about the attempted configuration, shouldn't we try to troubleshoot the actual issue instead of making up some different configuration that we can more easily troubleshoot ? :thinking:

 

[ampdude]

That's really possible? I really thought it was a bad batch of lamps. fivemega spoke of things that made me think... had to be the lamps. I'm not even sure what made me suspect the tail... oh, right, it had happened with it twice before. that is why I got the replacements. But it did not blow Tad Customs lamps, only that string of MN03.

That is odd, but if it did not blow out the other non-Surefire lamps than perhaps it was a bad batch of MN03 lamps. Or something happened to them at some point where they might have received extreme shock. I've never had any issues with the Executive Elite MN series lamps myself. Most of the time if a Surefire bulb is bad it will blow right away.

I've had a few, but not many over the years. I had an MN21 that went up right away in an M6. I think they had a bad string of MN20's at the time and the MN21's were probably facing a similar problem. Surefire replaced it right away and this one has almost a full battery pack through it with no issues. I had a P90 that went out after about two minutes or less of runtime. I supplied Surefire with the reflector markings and they replaced that lamp assembly immediately as well. Pretty good considering Surefire not not warranty their lamp assemblies or batteries.

If a Surefire lamp assembly lasts more than five to ten minutes and you can see it has a normal beam, you can be pretty well assured it will last a very long time. I have several lamps with easily over a hundred hours of runtime on them, with no bulb darkening. This is far over their manufacture rated specs of 25-35hrs lamp life.

 

[DRoc]

Dredged this one up, because I recently had two P61's that blew quite quickly. First was in a NIB 6P that I installed primaries in. I've been using Titanium Innovations.
Installed a NIB Z59 and got may five or six sets of batteries, then, HALFWAY through a set, it flashed-about mid way through the click mechanism.
Put a new P61 in, same thing. So installed a stock Z41 which looked pretty good, no issues since.
I'd never heard about pressure leakage, but it makes sense. A bad Z59 also makes a bit of sense.
Glad I have spares…

 

[aznsx]

https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/123.pdf

Note the instantaneous drops shown on graphs at moment of load connection? Remember that a voltmeter w/ high input resistance will not load the cell in that way, and that drop will not occur when measured in that way.