P1 turned into a "cheap date". Any Ideas?

I really love my old Fenix P1 natural. This thing is tiny but powerful enough. I wear suits to work and the small size is a bonus. It disappears on my belt and I do not get funny looks when I take my jacket off.

Anyway, my wife borrowed it for a night and the light died. She had left it on all night and fully drained the battery. Strangely the light no longer worked. I decided to give the light an extreme Deoxit treatment as a last resort. Well behold, it works again. However it no longer works on higher quality batteries. Energizer, Duracell and Panasonic will not power the little thing. The light works just perfectly with my old stock of Battery Station cells and Tenergy batteries. Not complaining about my "cheap date", but I'd love to know how this happened.

Any ideas?

...:thinking:....:candle:....:shakehead
thats a first...
:huh2: :wow:
I've ran my P1 to death on several cells and didn't have this kinda symptom before
Something tells me the board has the sense resistor fried or damaged but that couldn't be since the light still works, but gee...cell differences

I'm grabbing

I'm thinking it's a dimensional thing. Perhaps there was also a drop onto a hard surface involved while it was out of your sight? Could have shifted something so only certain brands fit properly to make an electrical connection.

Also grabbing here...

Maybe the Lower quality batteries have a higher nominal voltage then the better quality ones?

grab

Crenshaw

Illum_the_nation said:

...:thinking:....:candle:....:shakehead
thats a first...
:huh2: :wow:

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That is exactly how I feel!

I've even measured the cells and found them to be the same length. The cheap ones are 1300mAh vs 1500-1550.

We guys always want to know the logical explanation for things. Now that a woman has gotten involved, logical explanations may no longer be possible. Sorry, this is probably not what you wanted to hear.

LED_Thrift said:

We guys always want to know the logical explanation for things. Now that a woman has gotten involved, logical explanations may no longer be possible. Sorry, this is probably not what you wanted to hear.

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I'm sorry. You're right! What was I thinking?

contact 4sevens

*sigh
women.

Well normally I would power up the flashlight on my curve tracer at work and see exactly what voltage drop it starts to turn on at and whether or not it had any regulation. I would see if the voltage/current draw signature is any different than before. I am not familiar with the P1 model and how it normally works. So can't help you there too much. Is it up to full brightness with these other batteries? Take a good look at all metal to metal interfaces to see if they need more cleaning. May need some wire brushing to finish the job your deoxit started. It is possible that something is degraded on the regulator board. If it does use a current limiting resistor its always possible that as it overheated that the resistance went up by a small percentage. I have seen it happen. Depending on the type of resistor, its resistance can go up as its overheated from excessive power dissipation. Especially if it cracks internally and loses part of its conductive path.

Point is a lot of things can go wrong, so a visual inspection, as much electrical testing as is possible, and replacement of degraded components, is the way to go.

Could somebody explain me the "cheap date" joke?

- Vikas

Vikas Sontakke said:

Could somebody explain me the "cheap date" joke?

- Vikas

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She drinks the cheap stuff!