When scrolling past these photos quickly it is hard to tell whose post is whose. If mine were not FDE I would have no idea at all.Originally Posted by Doc_Glock
When scrolling past these photos quickly it is hard to tell whose post is whose. If mine were not FDE I would have no idea at all.
Well the pressure switch on one of the 350 lumen models is already starting to shit the bed. If I slightly bend the cable where it goes into the tail cap, or twist the rear portion of the tail cap, I can get the light to flicker or shut all the way off depending on which direction I bend or twist it. I discovered this last night going after a raccoon that tipped my garbage can over by the back patio. Thankfully it wasn't a bigger threat than the local Trash Panda. It hasn't been abused and there aren't many rounds through the gun it's on with the light attached. I haven't even had a chance to install the Cloud Defensive LCS that I bought for it.
Sample of one, but it has made me leery of them for serious use. I will keep the one that's on my beater training gun for now, but I'm returning the one with the faulty switch and I may just buy a Cloud Defensive OWL for my HD gun. I've avoided lights with cables for years because I feel that's the weak point in all of them, and as it turns out I was right. A 6P in a ring mount never did me wrong.
So if you bought one to put on a serious use gun, I'd inspect it and see if yours will do the same as mine.
I used these lights for awhile when they first came out.... eventually some had flickering issues, or just wouldn't turn on intermittently, with both the provided tap switch and the clicky tail cap, after looking into it, the problem was mounting them in near muzzle breaks, and flash hiders, the circuitry did not hold up that well to heavy class and training use on 5.56 rifles. The last straw was when one went down as I was lead man on a training event out in town up at Alliance, with Chappy and Doc Spears.
Soon as I went through the door, went to action the light, nothing..... just worked in the van as we were pulling up to the objective....shit, hit my PEQ for the vis laser and start fishing the handheld out of it's pouch....start feeling the UTM rounds zip by me from the role player, get lucky, put the laser on a moving shape in the next darkish room and hit him twice, PID was really not up to standard..... finish clearing the house with the rest of the team with the handheld clamped against the hand guard of my rifle.
We get back to the range and I rip that thing off and put a Surefire m600 on for the rest of the course. On guns that won't be used a lot they are probably okay, I got rid of all mine, I am also death to gear so..... experiences may vary, but I don't have any weapons mounted streamlights anymore. handhelds I do, haven't had issues with those.
Price sure is good though.....
My raccoon incident isn't nearly as cool sounding as your incident at Alliance, but I'm thinking of selling the remaining two that I have with the Cloud Defensive LCS that I bought for them. One has been spray painted so I doubt I could return it even if it stopped working.
I have found Streamlights to wear out over time however they do honor their warranty claims quickly. Several of my returns have shown a lot of exterior wear but never a problem when returned. I have one Surefire without any problems but it is in the catagory as a similar problem free Streamlight, neither experienced heavy continuous use.
So for daily rigorous use I rotate Streamlights and usually end up with a warranty replacement about once a year.
I'm personally not willing to play the warranty game with things I deploy with or might get caught in a door wishing it was working again. Don't need that doubt on my mind right then. Everything breaks eventually but ...... Well surefire hasn't let me down yet...
There are several generations of lights guys. If you're going to post your experiences, please let us know what unit you're using. I know that the thread topic is for the HL-X but people are posting photos of the rail mount 1.
There are also generational changes to the tail caps. The newer tail caps allow the cable to rotate.
I have an older rail mount 2 with the non rotational tape switch tail cap. No issues and the light has lived pretty close to a muzzle brake for 100% of its life. The HL-X that I have is almost brand new, probably something like 300 rounds through it without issues.
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