Pulled my rifle out of my range bag to shoot it today. My TLR-1HL was flipped on when I pulled it out. So it must of been on the whole car ride there. It was super hot. Felt like my barrel after about 100 rounds. I have seen some reviews online saying they get hot. I was wondering how many others have noticed this as well.

Wow, mine gets warm maybe a little more than warm after hitting the button when i  in the safe by mistake and leaving it in there for the night, but never hot hot.
Have you checked your terminals the battery sits on for corrosion? And you have probably changed your batteries after leaving it on that long, but if not change them. May need to send it back to check the connections are strong and not drawing loads of amps and warming it up.

Its pretty much new, factory batteries even. Maybe a month old. It was also about 105 outside today.

Huh maybe try and keep it on inside the house today for an extended period and see if it gets that hot again. If it does, maybe its a problem inside the light.

If it was on for an extended period of time while still inside a soft case that would probably explain it. With no air for convective heat transfer you basically turned the light into a ~ 6+ watt mini heater stuck inside a big oven mitt. Just be thankful you caught it before any sort of thermal runaway issue with your batteries venting inside the light.

This man understands thermodynamics, listen to him and be sure to turn off any heat producing device that is crammed inside of an insulator you care about.

well its not like I did it on purpose. The soft case must of activated the switch. Makes me wonder if it ever happened before. Seems kinda easy to do on accident.

They definitely get hot if left on...which is why they put "HOT" on the side of the light itself and dedicated a chapter in the instruction manual to it . The manual states it will get hot enough to cause a drop reflex if you pick it up but I believe also says it's not hot enough to actually cause a burn.

I'm glad you brought this topic up. I carry my rifle to the range in a soft case and I could see the light getting accidentally turned on. I'll probably pop the batteries before I go out next time.

That's probably one of the few downsides to using a TLR-1 on a rifle; even if you are comfortable with the toggle switch it seems as if it could be more prone to being accidentally activated than other switch types and there is still no simple way of locking it out like with most clicky style tail caps that only need to be unscrewed a few turns. If I recall correctly someone made a tail cap shroud for the Surefire X series lights in an attempt to address that problem -can't remember who it was though. But for the price and the output and the weight it's still really hard to beat the HL for an out of the box weapon light.


Edit - Unity Tactical -that is who made the add-on shroud for Surefire X series lights.

I don't recall where I read it, but someone trimmed the lever on their TLR-1 then added serrations so it was still functional but much harder to accidentally activate.
Tomac

This is why a lot of people dont like pistol lights on rifles cause of the AD possibility.











 

I find these lights more easy to use on rifles then normal mounted lights. Quicker and more natural to use.