badboy light engine problem

Hey all i just built my third light engine and this one is acting really strange. I used a badboy 500 and a royal blue luxeon111 emmitter. THe odd thing is its behaving like a downboy. what i mean is at 3 vin it barely lights up. If i pop a r123 in its running really nice until vin drops below the vf of the led (i'm measureing 3.58). I even couldn't help myself to see if it would survive a quick shot with 6 volts and it did. do you think my grounding wire isn't connected right and it's just running in direct drive???
jimmy

If it wasn't dead before, I probably is now, after the 6v shot. On the R123, it was likely running in DD. The behavior on the single 123 sounds like the board it bad. It isn't boosting.

Did you run it open ciruit at any point? Did you get a really bad smell at any point during the build or testing?

It does sound like the driver is out of the picture and you are in DD. I have sen this happen with a couple 5W BB's that blew the IC. Why your BB500 went "south", I have no idea.

Ya this is strange. O'h well I guess i've got a nice direct drive light engine. It wasn't really working all that well during testing and I didn't smell anything toasting and i've become very familiar with the toasting smell. thanks for the responses. And yes tony i knew i was playing with fire on the 6 volts but i couldn't help myself.
jimmy

jimmy,

I only mentioned it because I've been there and DONE that.

It is possible that you got a bad board. Stranger things have happened. Something might be telling you that you should have gone with a NexGen.

ya know i've been thinking about the nexgens lately. I've only been playing with madmax's, badboys, and downboys. I guess it would be the natural progession of things.
jimmy