The other half of the comparison thread - Modding the Nitecore EA4 - It's DONE and Beam Shots are up!

That’s quite a difference in output.

Awesome shots.

Thats quite an improvement. Are you happy with the way its turned out? Which light do you prefer now after the mods? I sound like a broken record.

Those beam shots are good… really good! You did a good job in modding the FL.

Nice mod as usual, think i gotta pick this up.

Yes indeed.

I’m happy with the fact that the copper really puts the heat out to the body now. When I fired this thing up to do beam shots, the body was warm in less than 30 seconds and after a minute there was no mistaking that this thing was pumping the heat out. Output is better than stock, but it’s also a cool white versus a warm white, so much of that is just the fact that cool white always “looks brighter”. Overall it was a success, but if I had to choose, I would choose the TR-A9. It has a more defined beam and is a better thrower. It’s slightly heavier and I like that. It also does not feel like it’s going to fall out of your hand, like the EA4 does. The EA4 is slick and harder to hold onto.

The A9 has issues in stock form. It is touted as 2s/2P, but I found that it was manually changed to 4S by someone along the way. The light I got was 4S in configuration and that's not at all necessary unless they had the wrong drivers for 2S and had to change the lights. It has a cheap glass lens and that's the biggest downfall for me, along with the poor output in stock form.

My vote goes for the A9 in modded form and the EA4 in stock form.

wow - nice mod!

Thank you for the pics! It looks brighter, more spill, but I do prefer the warmer tint.

I was wondering if the stock heat sinking could be improved but I guess there isn’t enough room.

Very nice mod! I need to find some copper to do press in heatsinks for some other lights.

An MT-G2 with 14500s in the ea4 body would have been cool given the improved the heatsinking. Despite what appears (from your ea8 teardown) to be a small contact between the heatsink pad and the walls of the body, my stock ea4w seems to gets warm almost immediately. In a low power device like the XM-L led is there more heat generated than the flux between the 2mm disc and the body can handle? If not they’d probably get quite a bit of mileage simply by improving the interface between the parts.

Is that the same micro switch you referenced before? Nice build. I learn with each build but it’s still hard to acquire more skill doing infrequent work. You do an excellent job pushing your skills to keep up with your enginuity.

Both sytles of switch came from Spark Fun.

This is my favorite shot. Apparently your new mod is so powerful that it vaporized your garbage dumpster! :open_mouth: Better be careful with your garage door too. :bigsmile:

Question. How easy is the switch to remove. Most importantly would it be easy to replace the rubber switch boot? Is there any locktite on the light or is disassembling it pretty straight forward? I have taken apart about 6 or 7 lights- but my concern with this one is screwing it up because it might be sealed.

There is no loctite. The “pill”, consisting of the led/star, driver section (plastic) and the contact plate all come out the front, by pushing from the back, (against that upper contact plate. I used a 1/2" rod against the contact plate and tapped lightly till it all came out.

You can replace the rubber boot after that is all out. It can be troublesome to fit it all back in, since nothing really holds the boot in. There's a boot and button and all that has to be laid in the light and then the rest has to slide back in in proper alignment.

Thanks for the prompt response. Nitecore is offering a replacement on these lights if you email their service department. But only if your boot is comprised of the old material and is currently defective. While my boot for now is ok, I see the eventuality of my piercing the boot or something (inadvertently) and having to replace the switch. Only Nitecore is saying it does not want you to attempt this yourself. Of course the boot may degrade several months down the road because it is made of the old stuff. Anyway, it’d be nice if you could just buy some of these switches. Oh and going back and looking at your ea8 thread, man there’s some cheap “S” inside, isn’t there. I guess all the money is in the driver design, and not the build materials. Oh well. Anytime I ever spend this much again on a light, I’ll look for a full dis-assembly first.

Hiya matey, can you give any more details on the switch used in this mod please?? I’m doing a similar mod having been given a broken EA4 to play with. But I’m having trouble finding a suitable switch to use.

The black switch looks just like the momentary switch on some lasers I destroyed experimented with.

Has anyone replaced the black switch side cap with a more translucent cap?

LOL, you too? I finally had to make the decision to just avoid lasers completely, they don't survive more than about 5 minutes after I first touch them.