It doesn't happen to everyone. But it does happen. I've seen a Surefire 6P that was partially blown apart, and had another part of it melted from Chinese batteries. Frequent the flashlight forums much, and you'll hear of more and more cases. Sure, they may work well some of the time, or even most of the time. All it takes is once however, to completely ruin your day/month/life. I'll spend a couple of bucks more to ensure that neither I, nor my gear, catches fire.

Pepper is right. All it takes is losing on 50.00+ tactical light and suddenly those saving from the cheap batteries just evaporated. Or burned away. Or something.

This post has been edited by Warlike: October 12th 2009 4:42 AM

I have like 5 good flashlights, and only one cost under $50. The last thing I want is a $100 flashlight blowing up and possible catching whatever its on on fire. I keep one of these in my car too, so think about how bad that could turn out.

I can only speak to what happened with those batteries in my light. It ruined that light, the only "good" thing is that was a cheap light that I got at Gander Mountain with a giftcard I got for Christmas a couple of years ago. I will not use another one of those batteries.



TS

Just a addition to my previous post about the seals popping and acid coming out of the batteries.
I did find three of those batteries in one of my stocks this evening and they are The Battery Station brand.
Blue Battery with yellow writing.

I saw another e-mail going around with a flashlight exploding, and it was with surefire batteries. Ill see if I can dig it up.

http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&...=5&t=951360

IMHO, the explosion in that one is 10 times more violent than the one posted earlier. But Im willing to bet that is because it was a metal flashlight.

That was a big explosion in that flashlight. The batteries did look real old.

Later in the thread he posts a pic of the ones in the box, which were the same batch, and they dont expire till 2013.