What happened to Arc AAA clone?

I did a search and I can't not find what happened to those little buggers. I was absent from CPF for a while and they seemed to have disappeared. I only have one and Minimoder gave it to me. (Thanks man! Pop in sometimes if you can)
Anyone know what happened? I just remember there was a BIG GB on these.

I think they fell out of style =) but i bet several ppl still have some they use? i love mine w/ an smjled in it. great flood light w/ long runtime. I have several of the lights still, thinking about modding them w/ my also large stock of smjled's and selling them on the custom/mod bst...

Are you just wondering what happened to the hubbub, or need one for yourself?

You can still find those counterfeit Arcs on Ebay. The vendor advertises them as 1 watt though. The group buy kind of fell apart. There were 2 of them, one worked, the other didn't as I recall.

I gave away perhaps fifty of the little lights.

I know of only one that died for some reason.

A nice little light for the money.

Wish I had a source for more.

There ya go...
http://search.ebay.com/finally-1-watt_W0QQfkrZ1QQfromZR8QQsubmitsearchZSearch
The seller always titles them with "Finally, 1 watt....blah blah..."
Seller: findingwholesale

Traded a couple of Dorcys for one. Found the head to be rather loose in the off position.

I had a few and gave them away soon as I got the Fenix E0

I had a couple and gave a couple away. Those failed when my friend was caving, so I replaced them with other lights. They are junk, but only due to the body. If you get an SMJLED, as others have pointed out, and replace the LED, they have good output and runtime. Then, buy some empty arc or Peak bodies and put the circuit board in there. A little drilling, a bunch of polishing, a little soldering (and about $20 worth of parts from Peak), and I've a stainless steel AAA light that's 15% less bright than my E1 that runs for 6.5 hours and is more than 1/4" shorter!

The empty body makes a good spare battery holder; you can screw the head on tight if the circuit board is gone.

Kevin

They were good lights for the price and the time, but with recent offerings from Fenix and the like with better build quality and runtime at fair prices, people probably decided to upgrade to something better.

Mine was well used, it had probably spent close to 2 years on my keychain and the threads on the head were almost completely worn down.

I've bought a few from the ebay seller, the heads are a bit loose on all of them, but they're still ok for the cost. I keep one on my spare keychain and they're ok for modding.

I still have an ARC-P on my keychain. Right next to my L0P. I love my Fenix lights, dont get me wrong, but the ARC-P has its place! 10 hour runtime on lithium primaries! Hard to go wrong there. Im still on the first battery.

I wrapped a couple of turns of teflon tape around the threads.

Smoothed them up fine. It also "tightened" the head a bit, so it wouldn't turn on accidently.

I still edc my clone on my keychain. The quality of them varies as does the machining as some are too easy to turn the head and some are too tight. Tint is all over the place and the threads on some stick out to make it hard for larger diameter AAAs to fit in.
For under $5 in bulk if you get a handful and sort out the mediocre ones they are still a great little light that you don't worry about losing like more expensive arcs and fenix lights.

JohnK said:

I wrapped a couple of turns of teflon tape around the threads.

Smoothed them up fine. It also "tightened" the head a bit, so it wouldn't turn on accidently.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. I'll try that.

EDIT The teflon tape stopped the wobble in the head. Thanks again.

I slipped a piece of 1/2" ID plastic tubing over the head to hold it in place. I put some electrical tape on the body to increase the friction with the plastic tubing. As a result, the head is really stiff which prevents accidental turn on. This is my long running backup light (to the Fenix E1 or L0P in my pocket) so I don't mind a stiff turn on.

thnx everyone for all this info!

i ordered and just recieved ten of these clones from the ebay seller mentioned(his posted info is pretty bad. there's a bunch of wrong info (ie: actual size)and he wouldn't answer my email questions about them. i took a chance and ordered anyway. they came in exactly as ordered and on-time.)

they came individually packaged, each with a split-ring.
all ten worked (i was expecting one or two not to even function).
all were bright & cool-white with a hot center and very little flood (not quite as bright as the 36K photon clones i have but same kind of beam. i'd guess brightness is around 25K)
although very ringy outside the center spot, they put out a much whiter, brighter and nicer beam than my original Arc AAA.
brightness on all were pretty close.
all LEDs stick out about the same (and all were below the front ring).
threads were loose on every one of them but a little blue locktite did the trick (i tried the teflon tape trick but every time i removed a battery the tape would need replacing. i prefer the locktite method).
threads are shallow and rough so care must be given to prevent cross-threading.
even with used alkalines (tested at 1.4V), they put out light just about equal to a new battery.

while they are definitely not the quality of an Arc AAA, they're fun and very useable. all in all, at around $5 each delivered, i consider them a "best buy" , great for give-aways or back-ups.

here are some pixs of these clones that i ripped off from other threads-






FOLLOW-UP: within a week one of them died on me. no reason, just stopped working. but at that price i should be surprised.
and now after a month i can say that i still think they are a terriffic back-up or gift. fact is, after i gave a couple to friends, my wife took the rest of them and put them in her kits all over the place (her daybag, horse pack, keyring, glovebox, etc) so i'm left without any at all. oh well, glad she's happy...

coyote - thanks for your experience sharing. glad the ebay seller came through. try an smjled in one - man it's a really great floody long-runner then!

nerdgineer - smart idea! and it looks pretty neat too. where'd you get the clear tubing from? the ends look beveled down. you truly are an 'engineer' =)

I still use mine a good amount, and was looking at doing another group buy a few months ago.

Overall I concluded that there wasn't enough interest to justify the time and effort, and the savings would be minimal over ebay.

fyi - photos added to my last post