Anyone Run Into Bad Surefire 123A's???

I purchased alot of Surefire 123A's about three years ago back when Surefire was offering them at discounted prices. I've noticed that I've returned to my three cell with a P91 on many occasions to find a dead light. At first I thought maybe it was me, and started leaving the tail-cap backed out more than the recomended single turn and it still kept happening. It's bothered me for a few years now. I don't actually use the three cell lights much but I am certain that I have never actually gotten twenty minutes out of a set of batteries, it really seems to be more of a storage issue. I should mention that the used 123A's do work for a while longer in my E2E even after they won't light the P91's... It seems to me that the P91 bulb assembly needs pretty fresh batteries to light.

Although I certainly have my share of faults, this has happened enough that I can assure you that I am not just loosing track of the time I have used the batteries. I gave a portion of the batteries I purchased to a friend and he has experienced the same issue (using them in two cell lights).

I remember that I bought over a hundred dollars worth of batteries, like I say, about three years ago and I am now almost out. I really use my E2E more than the three cell lights but really have actually used the SF's very little.
(Oh yeah, no kids or roomates or anyone else who could be using my flashlights without my knowledge.)

I am wondering if anyone out there run into similar problems with Surefire batteries purchased back when they were discounting???

Thank you in advance for any and all feedback!

Tim

Several people have experienced this and there have been several threads here about it.

I had the exact thing happen to me on two different occasions but they weren't Surefires. Mine were Sanyos. It happened in two different lights. An Arc LS with twisty, and an Arc LS with clicky. The cells died overnight.

Maybe space aliens visited me but instead of abducting me, they took my Arc flashlights back to the mother ship and played with them. It was nice of them to bring them back to me when they were done.

Just a thought - in my 2-cell lights, generally one cell dies well before the other has given up the ghost. I'm not an electrical engineer or anything, so I can't tell why it does, but it does. In my mind, the more cells you use, the faster that is going to happen. Now, whether or not it happens with series as compaired to parallel and so forth I don't really have any idea, but this is just how it works in my mind...

Thank you for your replies. I don't really know how fast the 123A's are going dead. I leave a flashlight on my bookcase by my bed and another in my bathroom off my bedroom. I'll occasionally pick one up, find it to be dead, install more SF batteries, a month or two later I'll try one and find it to be dead... I plan on calling SF's customer service department to discuss the issue with them. I posted this thread to see if others have experienced this problem. The expiration date on my bad batteries is 02-2013. I have a plastic bag full of dead batteries. I was going to recycle them and I started thinking about what a waste the purchase was. I bought over a hundred dollars worth so I wouldn't have to pay for shipping. Apparently a bad decision... It was mentioned that this issue has come up in the past. Can anyone remember if Surefire batteries were the subject of those earlier posts? Thanks once again for any input on this subject.

Tim

I've read of issues such as yours regarding SF123s. A while back I did experience what you're now experiencing with your 3-celled SureFires. It was happening with my SureFires. I know there's fresh SF123s just put in simply tapped on the switch to check the light on/off. After a period of time (month or so) I'd use it and it's dimmed considerably down? Bad batch maybe? I don't know. Hmmm. . . :thinking:

But not lately though. . .

I was having the same problem with my G2 and SureFire cells. About one out of every 3 "loads" would die prematurely. Usually just one of the 2 cells would short but it meant 2 wasted batteries since I didn't have anything to use the surviving partially-depleted cell. The cost and hassle of procuring CR123 were already negatives; the premature failures are what finally made me decide I didn't want any more CR123-based lights.

I wonder if any of original CPF member, know if faulty lithium cells have been happening for years, or its a relatively new thing.

regards.

Its been going on for at least a couple of years and there have been numerous threads relating to it. Eventually someone will post with unending reasons why its a figment of your imagination, operator ignorance etc

I just posted about that tonight myself. My E2E was dead tonight and last night worked great. the funny thing is they test at 2.79 volts and will light up my Inova XO fine. The Duracells in the Inova test at 2.93 and light up the E2E fine also. I don't get it.