Built Like A Tank

Do you have a flashlight that suffers abuses, but keeps going and going and going....

Umm, this will be an unpopular answer, but a 3D Mag. It's been around for a long time and is getting really ugly. But it still works. I have yet to replace a bulb. My wife uses it on a daily basis, and I use it under the car a lot.

Mike

G2
-tom

My oldest flashlight is a Mag 2D. It must be twenty years old if a day. Most of the black worn off , but an old friend.

Well it got a Christmas present.
Riped out the inside and soldered up a Lux III , Hotlips style heat sink that had to be custom machined to fit as the early Mags were considerably fatter bodied. DD from 3 C cells overdrives this light and I am waiting the arrival of a new lens to replace the faded, scratched yellow one.
Its like new again.......

How's this for a well-used light? In its previous life it was used on military bases and with the police in the northeast. It took its share of whacks and bumps, plus smashed a car windscreen, fell off a bridge, as was run over by a truck. About 25 years old.



Supposed to be jet black, stem to stern in case you're wondering. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Saying mags isn't a sad answer-for the price, they are the toughest lights you can get /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif. SF makes tough lights but look at their prices /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/str.gif

abtomat what kinda light is that? early mag? switch is different then mag's i am used to. VDG

Me too with the hate-to-admit-it but...my 3D, blue Mag has been through the "war" and back. Though it's lost a lot of the blue it still resides in my car. After 20 years it must be "true blue".

In 1992 I duct taped it to the left front of my '78, '98, that I bought in '88. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif No kidding. I put the headlight out in a minor "skirmish" and drove the car like that for a month. You should have heard the comments from my co-workers. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif

Dorcy AAAs seem to go forever. I am a lot meaner to them as I am with say my ArcAAA. So they get my vote.

Cameron

You guys are not going to believe this, but maglights(regular)have always worked out for me and i have abused them pretty bad. I once used a mini-mag as a hammer and it worked after that real good.

Mags are tough and easily field-replaceable if you truly manage to trash one. Look upon them not as lesser lights but as lights waiting to realize their true destiny... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Not quite a true 'external' abuse story, but in the hotwire mods popular on CPF, the Mag bulb pedestal has to withstand temperatures which could approach 400F. That's some SERIOUSLY rugged plastic there - I thought it would become runny liquid after a few minutes, but those that have been there done it assure me that it holds up well.. and is field-replaceable for $10 if you need spares.

X5T-HA

my Arc AAA went thru a helluva lot and kept working. i have a 2D Maglite with an EverLED that works no matter what it goes thru. and my UK eLED has been dropped quite a few times without suffering more than a scratch or rub mark.

my Inova X5T-HA is also one damn tough light, but i haven't used it quite as often after getting my UK eLED.

[ QUOTE ]
BakerOnFire90 said:
Saying mags isn't a sad answer-for the price, they are the toughest lights you can get /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif. SF makes tough lights but look at their prices /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/str.gif

[/ QUOTE ]
But I would rather have a SureFire than a Mag any day. Mags can't even come close to the power of a SF.

Thats kind of a bullshit statement, dont you agree?
The price question IMPLIES that a SF is better.
If i say "my fiat is nice for its money", then yes, a Porsche is better in any way (or a hummer if you pick difference criteria), besides the PRICE which isnt too unimportant for soem (a lot?) (most?) people. Im sure i would like a SF light, too, but i cant really afford one...

Mags may not have perhaps, say, the build construction of SFs, but they're solid enough to take what the world's got to dish out, and besides, they can be souped up to deliver on par with SF's finest incans - we're talking the big guns here (M6, 10X). See my earlier comment about Mags and destiny.

SF has some nice offerings at the lower end of the price curve, too. The G2 and 6P are decent value for money.

I find it quite interesting that Mags get mentioned so often when it comes to toughness and reliability. My Mags (2 D, 2 C, various MiniMags) have also proved very good in that respect over the years, and I've used them in all sorts of situations. Sure, the beam quality is pretty awful, but at least they work.

I'm in the process of looking at other makes because my requirements have changed somewhat. The really frustrating thing at the moment is that information on how tough and reliable flashlights are is pretty hard to come by. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence, but that's about it. Sure, some are obviously so flimsy they'll fall apart when you drop them. But many others seem well-built, but especially with more complex lights that doesn't seem to say much about reliability.

Take Inova for example: These lights seem well-built with pretty good finish; they're certainly among the tougher lights on the market. And yet I've read quite a few reports of Inovas suddenly failing without warning and of problems with the tailswitch in the T series. So, *how* reliable and tough are they? I don't know. The same applies to most other makes.

*sigh* It ain't easy, it seems.

Hans

Hi, Abtomat.

Dang, that's one love-d maglite(?).

I had a Solitaire that had transformed from black to silver over the course of 10+ years...and it still kept on going like an Enegizer bunny.

Pila GL4R
been on duty for over 3 years now. Dropped, kicked, and thrown. Works great and doesn't look too bad still

I shot my X5 into a 1/2" piece of plywood so hard that the wood split in two. The light was unscratched.