MikeSalt, I find your experience with the lens odd. The temperature resistant glass lens on the E1e/E2e is VERY thick and even dropping the lens should not have had the effect you described. I've never seen one cracked and I'd also find it very odd if it came that way new out of the box.
The other two things you mentioned I can likely explain. First of all, the clicky switch. The early 1st revision Surefire Z57/Z61 was a piece of crap, to put it mildly. I'm guessing you had the first revision. I had a few of these that failed as well back in the day, and that's what lead to my preference for sticking with the original Z52/Z53/Z54 twisty. I once took a first gen Z57 apart that had failed exactly as how you described (failed in the on position, but I could use it like a twisty to twist on and off the light) and sprayed the parts with breakfree CLP or some type of gun lube, I don't remember for certain this was over ten years ago. I remember having a bunch of crap out on the table, it was a lot of parts and trying to figure out how to put it back together was annoying. When I reassembled the switch it worked fine, but I never trusted it fully after that. Around 2006 or 2007 Surefire came out with a new revision of the switch that had a self contained clicky mechanism that is night and day more reliable than the original Z57. I believe most of those had a white plastic housing. They lasted for a very short time, and the only ones I ever saw were in E2e's that were being closed out in the zippered pouch from certain retailers. Then shortly after that around 2007 they released another revision of the Z57 with the self contained clicky mechanism, but in a black plastic body surrounded by a metal colander. I'm not sure if they were using different vendors, or they just made the change in color to signify the latest revision. That is the internal clicky mechanism that Surefire put on incan E series lights until they were discontinued and both of the final revisions are very reliable.
Now the lamp assembly. I'm assuming you're most likely talking about a P60 or possibly a P61. Over the years I've had VERY FEW Surefire lamps actually fail on me. In fact there's only one that distinctly comes to mind as I was working a night security shift, it was a new lamp, a P90, and after less than a minute maybe two minutes as it was acting funny, it left me in the dark until I found my backup light in a completely dark building. But, there have been a couple of others, I just can't place them. I've noticed from many hundreds of lamps that if a lamp is good it will last many hundreds of hours without even darkening even though I believe the average rated life on a lot of their tactical bulbs is around 25-30hrs. In my experience if the lamp is bad from the factory, it will fail within the first five or ten minutes. I've had more than one fail this way. If it's a normal good lamp, it will last a really long time. So, it is likely that you experienced, a bad bulb.
And from what I remember, this is years ago, but I sent in photos of the blown lamp assembly to Surefire with the stamped date code and I think they sent me a new P90 even though they don't normally warranty their lamp assemblies or batteries.
