I have a quite a few good 18650 Laptop pulls so I soldered 2 in series and then soldered leads to the ends for quick portable Brewster Projects home boy testing. 
I like your setup, good old fashion engineering 
Is there any easier way for me to test the driver though?
You could ring it out with a DMM, check for ground short, ground ring on the driver to the driver spring. E-switch should/could blip once, but if it is truly grounded out will continue to ring.
The battery/power set-up is just easier to check the whole set-up. You can remove the leads from the star and check the LED off the battery set-up too. Just don’t over heat the LED it’s going to get HOT real fast!
Ok, I will run a few tests and see if I can figure out what is going on there. I'm going to watch a few how to youtube vids first just to make sure I know what I am doing.
I touched the LED + and - terminals briefly with a little 9v battery that I wired up and the L6 led lights up, so I don't think there is anything left except that the driver died for no reason unless anyone else has any ideas? BTW what paste is recommended to use to mount the the star on the heat sink?
Try to jiggle all the components of the driver to see if anything has be unsoldered from its pad.
Also set your multimeter in Ohms and check the resistance between the power wires.
I did jiggle everything but except for the spring bypass wire which disconnected from the spring it looks good. I unsoldered the star as I want to replace the driver since I have a spare but the side switch which is connected to the driver by two wires only goes out from the front. Does that mean I have to unsolder the side switch wires as well? The joints are so tiny on the switch, it wouldn't be easy. Is there another way?
You can either file tiny notches as seen here or file the sides of the switch pcb flat. Both work.
Very helpful thanks. Got to go to the hardware store now and see if I can find such a tiny file as I like the idea of filing the head in case I do future mods.
The top and bottom of the hole are thinnest and are easy to open up. The sides are much thicker.
Thanks for the tip. Just getting at it now so that really helps.
Got the new driver in and it works now, but it stays on turbo and the side switch does not work, only the tail cap switch works?
Update: I found the problem and got it working. I see now that the old driver would have been fine too and I did not need to swap it but at least I know how to do it now. The problem was that on my functioning L6's, there is a white round plastic ring around the emitter to keep the reflector high enough not to touch the contacts. My one is missing the white ring and that explains the on and off problems with this one. I pulled off the reflector and everything works. I put it back on and it goes haywire. I need to somehow find that ring and if I'm lucky Simon may have one.
The negative wire from the emitter is shorted. Try loosening the driver ring and move it around, then tighten it back up. The reflector isn’t touching the emitter wires, are they?
I just updated before you posted. Problem all along was a missing ring around the led and you're right, the reflector was touching the emitter wires! Finding one of those plastic rings may be not so easy though.
Glad you found the problem.
I couldn’t find those spacers anywhere. I think Simon is the only source.
Thanks. It was still a good exercise as now I know I can change the driver finally, so thanks for the help with the notching to get the side switch out and thanks to Kawiboy for some behind the scenes help. I did send a message to Simon just in case he can find some, if not I'll have to make some type of spacer that won't be affected by the heat.
Or just cover the wire contacts with electrical tape or something similar so the reflector can’t touch the bare contacts. You could, feasibly, cut a washer shaped piece from the side of a plastic milk jug such that the wires are covered but the emitter is clear… on a stock light this shouldn’t be a problem.
I may try that. If the reflector also would have made contact with positive terminal, would a melt down have occurred or would the protection circuit in the battery just trip?
Anyone upgrade theirs with XHP70.2 ?
Looking for impressions, thanks in advance.
Reflector contact to the positive terminal is a direct short, usually results in melted down springs. Once in a while the driver takes the hit, but usually the springs discolor (rainbow or blacken) and collapse.
Negative contact bypasses the driver and goes into direct drive, no modes are available when the negative wire is touching the reflector and grounding out.