Kitchen Panda
Enlightened
While putting away the updated insurance for the car yesterday, I pulled out the car light and decided to give it a preventive maintenance inspection. This was a Home Depot "Defiant" 3 C zoomable light I'd bought only a couple of years ago, to replace my long-suffering Maglight 2C that finally gave up after another set of alkalines leaked and destroyed the switch. I liked the 2C size and though the Defiant would have been a good successor - and the zoom lens was, I thought, a good match for house number reading or fanning out to read a map or change a tire.
The Defiant barely lit. I opened the cap and checked for leaky or tarnished batteries, they looked OK but because I was out and about I didn't have a meter handy for testing. Put the batteries back in, screwed down the cap, no light. Oh heavens, I thought, I've put one in backward...hard to do with Duracells, they have a good paint job to keep + and - sorted out. Unscrew, dump batteries...nope, all the right way around....reassemble, still no light. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, so naturally I repeated this at least twice, hoping to revive the light.
Check glove box, and found the three spare C cells I had stored for just such an event. But...I can no longer unscrew the cap. Now this has become a workbench job.
Hours later, attempt to unscrew the cap, applying ever-escalating levels of torque. Realizing the flashlight was probably toast, this turned from a repair operation to an autopsy. The combination that finally worked was pump-pliers and the Vise of Knowledge. Those threads will never mate again. I'm a little shocked that I could destroy them with hand-tightening!
Turns out there were two failures. The C cells had given their last gasp on my first trial - two were around 1 volt, the third was at less than half a volt. But more seriously, some assembly-line worker in a far-off land had skimped on the heat when soldering the wires that join the LED in the zoomy head with the rest of the light. One wire had pulled right out of the solder joint, like pulling a foot out of a shoe.
I'm glad this failure showed up on a mild afternoon of errand running, and not while trying to change a tire by the side of the road in a driving rainstorm.
The good news is, I wanted a more compact light for the new car anyway. This justified a new flashlight purchase! The Nextorch P8A that was my high-power EDC light has been reassigned to car duty - it can even charge from the same cord we use to top up the phones. I'm hoping its 18650 battery doesn't mind the cold as much as alkaleaks doe. The new EDC light will be a Baton 2, which comes with the high-current charging cable - I can use that also with my H2R headlamp.
The poor old Defiant will be dismantled for the organ banks - who knows what those parts will show up in?
Bill
The Defiant barely lit. I opened the cap and checked for leaky or tarnished batteries, they looked OK but because I was out and about I didn't have a meter handy for testing. Put the batteries back in, screwed down the cap, no light. Oh heavens, I thought, I've put one in backward...hard to do with Duracells, they have a good paint job to keep + and - sorted out. Unscrew, dump batteries...nope, all the right way around....reassemble, still no light. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, so naturally I repeated this at least twice, hoping to revive the light.
Check glove box, and found the three spare C cells I had stored for just such an event. But...I can no longer unscrew the cap. Now this has become a workbench job.
Hours later, attempt to unscrew the cap, applying ever-escalating levels of torque. Realizing the flashlight was probably toast, this turned from a repair operation to an autopsy. The combination that finally worked was pump-pliers and the Vise of Knowledge. Those threads will never mate again. I'm a little shocked that I could destroy them with hand-tightening!
Turns out there were two failures. The C cells had given their last gasp on my first trial - two were around 1 volt, the third was at less than half a volt. But more seriously, some assembly-line worker in a far-off land had skimped on the heat when soldering the wires that join the LED in the zoomy head with the rest of the light. One wire had pulled right out of the solder joint, like pulling a foot out of a shoe.
I'm glad this failure showed up on a mild afternoon of errand running, and not while trying to change a tire by the side of the road in a driving rainstorm.
The good news is, I wanted a more compact light for the new car anyway. This justified a new flashlight purchase! The Nextorch P8A that was my high-power EDC light has been reassigned to car duty - it can even charge from the same cord we use to top up the phones. I'm hoping its 18650 battery doesn't mind the cold as much as alkaleaks doe. The new EDC light will be a Baton 2, which comes with the high-current charging cable - I can use that also with my H2R headlamp.
The poor old Defiant will be dismantled for the organ banks - who knows what those parts will show up in?
Bill
