Convoy L2/L6 modding thread

Lexel had springs available as an option.

Missed on that but will reuse the old springs. Thanks.

What size led’s go on switch?

And where I can get transparent cover for it?

JasonWW thank you for sharing the above, wish I had known about the little notches in the side switch mounting hole trick (Kawiboy). Will do that on the next one.

Jason, did you put power to the 2 SMD LED’s in Series or in Parallel? Reason I ask is because those are 3V LED’s and the power supply is 8.4V on a fresh pair of cells, so either you ran them in series or the power supply point you found on the driver is a 3V output side supply point. Is that supply point from the Inductor (silver box like component) actually 3V? Think I’m seeing what you did there, makes for a nice and easily sourced lighted side switch without a lot of hassle.

At first I didn’t see why the two slots then I figured out it lets you feed the switch board from the inside, completely wired up.

Thinking slow these days… just looking to confirm I’m seeing it right. :wink:

The clear switch covers are from Convoy. Simon uses them on the clear version of the L6. He will send you some only for the cost of shipping (a couple dollars) or if you buy something he can add them to the order for free.

The LEDs I got from DBCustom. I’m pretty sure they are sized 0805/2012. They are cheap if ordered from china. EBay has lots of them.

At first I thought 1206 leds would fit, but as you can see, they are a little big for the switch pads.

Yep, the notches are just to slip the switch PCB through. It would be nice if Simon designed the L6 with notches, but a small round file does the job pretty easy. The top and bottom of the ridge get really thin so that’s the best spot to file.

If you look at the pictures you can see where I bridged the 2 pads on the back of the switch with a small metal wire and ran a single wire to them.

The negative side of both leds connect to the blue negative wire on the pcb. The switch was designed with 4 pads on the back. One positive wire for the switch and one positive for each led. That way you can use 2 different color leds like for battery voltage, USB recharge indicator, etc… All 3 positive wires share the one negative wire.

The positive voltage source on that metal can is battery voltage, so 8 volts roughly. If I had added 1 led I could have used a 5k to 10k resistor to drop down the voltage. Since I added 2 leds, for better light distribution, a 10k to 20k seems to work well.

I dont think it’s possible to run the 2 leds in series since they share a common ground.

I plan to tidy this up and reduce the chances of a short by using a tiny smd resistor now that I know what value to use. I’ll look through some old circuit boards to salvage one.

I plan to pull this current driver out soon to put in my Tx Avenger FET driver from Lexel when it arrives. It will also have a lighted side switch when the tail switch is turned on.

I’m gonna put this current driver (detuned to maybe 4 or 5 amps) in a little Supfire L5-S. It uses a 29mm driver, a clear momentary side switch and a clicky tail switch. Add some 26350 batteries, some copper spacers, shorten the reflector depth, add an xhp70 and you have a mini version of the L6! Lol

Thank you JasonWW :+1:

I looked at doing this lighted switch design on my Black L6, but it’s got an FET driver and I wasn’t sure where to draw power… figured the switch wire was coming from the MCU which had a regulated voltage of >5.5V due to the Zener mod, but couldn’t get it to work… might have something to do with my pain meds, don’t know. :wink: I have LED’s on the board, will look into it later.

If you run an inline resistor you can run the switch LED’s off the full voltage no problem.

I took the driver out and used magnets to hold the batteries together and to hold the negative wire to the battery. Then I pressed the driver spring up against the battery positive. It was pretty tricky to do. Then I could use my multimeter to find a constant source of positive power on the top of the driver.

He’s gotta find full voltage first. He’s got a zener modded MTN17DD driver.

For the full voltage simply connect to the V+ from the main LED and then to ground via a resistor. Lots of grounds you can use from the input to the FET or the ground ring, OTC ground, C1 ground ect.

Built hundreds of FET drivers, pretty much know the drill there. Just not used to using these tiny SMD LED’s. Nor am I used to doing the mods so heavily drugged. :confounded: Probably shouldn’t, have burned myself a few times lately. Left hand and arm are totally out of whack.

Jason, the package those LED’s came in identifies them as SMD SMT 080. Hope that helps. I got 8 colors, 20 in each tape, for like $8 and some change on ebay.

they are most likely 0805 LED’s. These are cheap and easy to get on ebay. You can get 100 of them for like $2.

I have hundreds laying around for building lighted tailcaps.

That would only light the side switch when the main beam is on (and not needed then), but not when the light is in standby mode.

My whole reason for wanting the lighted side switch is so I would know whether the rear tail switch is on or off. It also helps to locate the switch in the dark instead of having to feel for it.

By connecting the side switch LED to the main led V+ and then to the ground ring via a resistor (most likely between 25-50k), the LED will be on anytime power is applied to the driver. The V+ is connected directly to the battery and so in the ground ring.

Okay, so there is always battery positive going to the emitter and it’s the negative wire from the emitter that the driver controls/manipulates?

Is that how all drivers work or do some control the positive wire going to the emitter?

I’m still not sure how power flows through a driver.

In all the FET based drivers we use the positive is always connected, we only control the ground. Since you are bypassing the 7135/FET by going directly to the ground ring (with any of the connection points I listed above) the LED always gets power when power is applied to the driver.

You would need a firmware and driver that supports an indicator LED in order to control the LED past that.