At the risk of being labeled "That Crazy Person", I have a strange(and true) story to share about what happened to my Quark 2AA R2 a couple of days ago and to see if this has ever happened to anyone else.
I grabbed my Quark and crawled behind my entertainment center to re-route some wiring. During the process, I noticed that the clicky on my flashlight was getting hard to push. So I inspect the clicky end and notice that the rubber boot is dome shaped and spongy when I pushed down on it. It got to where I couldn't get enough leverage with my thumb to depress the switch. So I wrapped my hand around the flashlight and used my trigger finger to click the clicky.
The next series of events happened in around five or six seconds. My nose was within six inches of the tailcap and I was peering down at the clicky end, so I had a birds eye view of the events to come. I started clicking the flashlight off and on a few times, noticing it getting harder to click each time. Then "POW", my finger was kick away from the end on the tailcap and the rubber boot flew off. It sounded similar to popping the cork on a bottle of champagne.
Still behind my A/V equipment, I was kind of bewildered at what just occurred. My initial thoughts directly after the boot blew off was that I pumped that puppy up with air like a bicycle tire.
I have never had the tailcap, clicky and boot apart before, so I didn't know what it was suposed to look like under the boot. The clicky would click, but the light didn't work. I performed the paper clip trick wiht the tailcap off and I could get the light to work and run through all its modes. I figured the clicky was bad and I put the light on the fridge and was going to call 4Sevens when I had the chance.
I thought about it for a couple of days and decided that the pneumatic propulsion of my rubber boot was a little far fetched and that it was probably something mechanical that came loose in the clicky and some sort of spring effect caused the boot to become air-born.
So last night I get time to take another look at the light. I used a couple of golf tees to unscrew the internal nut in the tailcap and remove the clicky assembly. It all looked good to me, so I install the boot and clickie and nut and snug it all down. The flashlight is now working like a brand new one.
Now I'm back to thinking that I pumped that thing up with air and blew the rubber boot off. Maybe one of the o-rings had a one way leak and was acting like a reed valve in a compressor. Very strange.
Has this happened to any one else?
I grabbed my Quark and crawled behind my entertainment center to re-route some wiring. During the process, I noticed that the clicky on my flashlight was getting hard to push. So I inspect the clicky end and notice that the rubber boot is dome shaped and spongy when I pushed down on it. It got to where I couldn't get enough leverage with my thumb to depress the switch. So I wrapped my hand around the flashlight and used my trigger finger to click the clicky.
The next series of events happened in around five or six seconds. My nose was within six inches of the tailcap and I was peering down at the clicky end, so I had a birds eye view of the events to come. I started clicking the flashlight off and on a few times, noticing it getting harder to click each time. Then "POW", my finger was kick away from the end on the tailcap and the rubber boot flew off. It sounded similar to popping the cork on a bottle of champagne.
Still behind my A/V equipment, I was kind of bewildered at what just occurred. My initial thoughts directly after the boot blew off was that I pumped that puppy up with air like a bicycle tire.
I have never had the tailcap, clicky and boot apart before, so I didn't know what it was suposed to look like under the boot. The clicky would click, but the light didn't work. I performed the paper clip trick wiht the tailcap off and I could get the light to work and run through all its modes. I figured the clicky was bad and I put the light on the fridge and was going to call 4Sevens when I had the chance.
I thought about it for a couple of days and decided that the pneumatic propulsion of my rubber boot was a little far fetched and that it was probably something mechanical that came loose in the clicky and some sort of spring effect caused the boot to become air-born.
So last night I get time to take another look at the light. I used a couple of golf tees to unscrew the internal nut in the tailcap and remove the clicky assembly. It all looked good to me, so I install the boot and clickie and nut and snug it all down. The flashlight is now working like a brand new one.
Now I'm back to thinking that I pumped that thing up with air and blew the rubber boot off. Maybe one of the o-rings had a one way leak and was acting like a reed valve in a compressor. Very strange.
Has this happened to any one else?
