surefire question

I just bought a surefire g2 & the light worked for about 5 seconds & died, thankfully still in the parking lot of the place I bought it. went back in the store & the salesman looded it over & determined that the bulb was bad & replaced it on the spot. it worked until I got home and died again, batteries check out fine.
Is this common? I thought surefire was supposed to be almost bulletproof & could knock down children at 30 feet.

I took it back & exchanged it for a Streamlight L2-twintask
a poor man's surefire aviator.
I do not have the feeling of quality I felt with the surefire, but I have 3 leds & a xenon bulb.

I hope my experience is just a fluke as I still want a surefire.

I would definitely say it was a fluke. I've have a lot of Surefires and I have never had a problem. I wonder if the batteries may have been the real source of the problem? Perhaps they were putting out too high of a voltage that kept burning out the bulbs?

-Mike

I think you made a good choice in going for a combo incandescent/led light. I would no longer consider using an incandescent as a small EDC due to exactly what happened to you. Much less chance of critical failure in the field with leds & led/incandescents. I do think that you just happened on a bad batch of bulbs in that SF. Sucks, doesn't it?

[ QUOTE ]
uncleknife said:
I took it back & exchanged it for a Streamlight L2-twintask
a poor man's surefire aviator.
I do not have the feeling of quality I felt with the surefire, but I have 3 leds & a xenon bulb.


[/ QUOTE ]I dunno, I have a SL TT 2L and I think the quality is great. You now have a very nice, usable light for a fraction of what the Aviator costs. Plus, it didn't die on you right after bought it. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Thanks for the quick responses.

I was feeling a little self-consious, thinking the twin task was kind of cheap looking, but I can't find any faults with it other than I need to find a holster for it.

[ QUOTE ]
uncleknife said:
Thanks for the quick responses.

I was feeling a little self-consious, thinking the twin task was kind of cheap looking, but I can't find any faults with it other than I need to find a holster for it.

[/ QUOTE ] I was very impressed with my 1L when I received it. These are great lights, especially for the money. I have a 2L coming as well and thinking of buying a second. For the same price I'd rather have dual mode, I find it very usefull.

I've had no problems with Streamlight bulbs including drops on concrete and using my old SL20 like a baton. Many here have posted failures of SF lamps and it's common IMO.

Brightguy.com has the holsters for it, Ripoffs/Reeline brand model C0-69 I beleive. Search 2L, click on the light and then click acc's.

surefire bulbs either quit working right after you start using it or last forever in my experience. if you get a bad one, it'll die right away but if you get a good one, chances are it'll survive most drops and knocks. btw it sounds like you had really bad luck (two bad lamps in a row)....sorry about that /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

I had some problems with the Surefire P60's going out on me in a 6P.
Had a couple go out from light drops and had another go out after a change of batteries.
I had three go out in two weeks.
Surefire sent replacements, but I just don't trust the P60's anymore.

When I'm working out of town, it's friday afternoon and I'm in the middle of a job were I really need my light it really ticks me off when I change the batteries in the middle of the job and have the bulb blow on me /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif
Or I drop the light three feet and the bulb blows. This was also on a friday afternoon in the middle of a job /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I have droppep my E2o-HA/KL1 a couple times, even bezel down on hard tile and it's still is working fine.

I'm finding it's hard to beat a LED, no bulb to replace and you get a little more warning that your batteries are going dead befor you completely lose all light.

Maybe I just had some bad luck with the P60's or maybe I was just expecting to much from a $15 bulb.

Wow, I must just be lucky. I have 3 SFs running P60\61. I've had a 6P for several years and got it used. I've never replaced an LA yet. I'll have to pick up some spare LAs. Can't wait for the L5\L6.

Tom

My yellow G2 came with a bulb that was dim and had a blue corona. SF sent me a new P60. Still think the E2e beam is MUCH better!

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sigp6 said:
Wow, I must just be lucky. I have 3 SFs running P60\61. I've had a 6P for several years and got it used. I've never replaced an LA yet. (...)

[/ QUOTE ]

The thingis that more people tend to report a broken LA than to tell others that it worked thus we "seem" to hear about broken P60/P61s if asked for - that's what I believe. Of course there are some LA's out there that might fail, nevertheless there are several others that don't fail - we just don't know about it. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif

I've had several very good LA's and one or two bad ones but these failed usually in the first few minutes of use. The others are still in fine working condition - depending on how I treated some of them /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I have 4 G2's. My son's "blew" within about 2 minutes of him using it to torture my neurotic bulldog. I immediately called SF customer service and had a brand new lamp assembly in my mailbox within a week. It's been working just fine ever since.

As far as the E2e beam being better... I agree... it tortures the neurotic bulldog much more effectively than the G2 but I'm not likely to hand an E2e to my 13 year old son as EDC and just to torture the neurotic bulldog... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif