I recently got four of these shorties. Two white and two yellow. The two white worked fine after an initial charge. One of the yellows hit ok, but the cutoff was about 4 secs on the initial hit and like 1-2 secs on subsequent hits. The other yellow was the some as other folks have described here - DOA - led lights up but no vapor.
I wasn't upset or anything, I've gotten 30+ batteries from these guys and this is the first time I've had a problem with any of them. That's a pretty good track record in my mind. So, I just went on about my business, vapin away...
Last night I got home from work, pulled out a fresh cart and pulled one of the white shorties off the charger it had been sitting on all day. Took a hit, the led lit but no vapor. WTF, tried a different cart, same thing. OK, this sucker was hittin like a champ yesterday and now it's like the yellow one that came in DOA out of the box.
So, I found this thread and took note of the posts that mentioned moving the center post of the battery around. I used a push pin and poked it thru the air holes on the side of the battery just below the threads. You can jimmy up the center post pretty easy there and with the three holes on these batts you can get it aligned straight and flush after you raise it up a bit. After doing that my previously dead white shorty hit freakin awesome. Seriously, it was about as good as my passthru. So I tried this with my original DOA yellow. Same result, hits like a passthru. The two that were working ok, also got the pin jimmying and now they too kick all forms of unholy .... I've got to believe that this is what Mark meant when he said "dialed in".
I understand that we shouldn't have to screw around with a commercial product and I'm sure Steve and the crew will get it figured out. We all know they will take care of anyone who got a bad one and wants a replacement. However, after you do get these little suckers dialed in, no one will be able to get them away from you until they pry it from your cold dead fingers.
If you have one of these shorties and you don't think it's hitting very good or if you think it's just dead, please try the push pin jimmy trick. It transformed all four of my shorties into cordless passthru's.
One other note: If you have an ac charger only use that on your shorties. Put it on very slowly and gently just about a half a rotation more after the led comes on. To much pressure on these will push the stem down and cause the DOA phenomenon. At least, I think that's what's happening...
