My Mag Solitaire mod

As detailed in my ‘hello’ post the other day, I have a Maglite Solitaire that I modified to run an LED using a 12v MN21 battery.

I have had the Sol for many a year and only gets light (no pun intended) use but I wanted an LED upgrade for longer run times and brighter output.

I searched on a famous auction site and found some 3mm white LEDs complete with resistors for use with 12v. They only cost a couple of quid (pounds sterling for those of you that aren’t English) for 5 of each.

Knowing that the MN21 battery was nice and small and ran at 12v, my (tiny) mind got to work.

I already knew that the MN21 batteries are actually a bunch of 1.5v button batteries in a case but wanted to keep this conversion as simple as possible and use ‘of the shelf’ batteries.

Plus with the resistor ‘carrier’ it makes the conversion very easy to go from standard to modified if the MN21 batteries were not available. As we all know, AAA batteries can be bought absolutely everywhere. Not always the case for the MN21.

So, how did I do it?

I’ve never tried soldering before nor do I own a soldering iron so I took the components to a friend’s house and he did the soldering for me.

Also, I don’t have any pictures of the procedure, just the finished article. My camera isn’t that great either so I’ll apologise before you see the pics.

Using the caps from another MN21 battery, the resistor was soldered to the underneath of the + cap. A section of the outer ‘casing’ from a ball point pen was cut to suitable length and then the – cap was hit with a small tack to make a hole for the resistor wire to poke through. That was then cut and carefully soldered in place.

Voila, one resistor holder-cum-battery spacer!

This combined with the MN21 battery takes up the same space as a standard AAA battery.

Now for the bulb.

As you can guess, very easy to do by cutting the LED legs to length and then bending to suit the spacing of the standard bulb.

My LED had a small lip at the base which I removed by carefully sanding it away.

Put them all together and you have:

Should I need to convert back to standard (because I can’t get hold of a MN21) all I have to do is remove the LED bulb and store it in the tail cap after removing the standard bulb from there, pop the spacer in my pocket and put in the standard bulb and AAA battery.

The ability to focus has mysteriously disappeared, and the throw isn’t fantastic, but that doesn’t bother me as it only ever gets used for close up work (map reading in car, finding keyholes in the dark etc.) Candle mode is much improved in my opinion.

So, there you have it. Hope you like it. It’s my very first mod which I did without any research or experience. I just used my ingenuity and crossed my fingers.

Wow, it’s nice to see a different approach to the Solitaire. I would not have thought of using a 12V battery!

Wow! Nice looking resistor/spacer unit! I know that's got to be so much better than the stock incan solitaire bulb...

Nice little mod. Thanks for sharing!

Very creative. Like how it is all reversible back to stock form.

Glad you all like it.

Been having a look around, I quite like the idea of a Cree powered Sol………………….

We’ll have to wait and see about that one. 0:)

Great job on the mod. I really like that spacer/resistor setup. Quite professional looking actually. :)

nice job, a real preppers solution.

You probably wouldn’t say that if you saw it up close and personal! It’s not perfect but it serves it’s purpose. 8)

Why, thankyou Sir :crown:

You have been bitten. Be very careful where this takes you. There is a trick some off use here to cover up, lets say work that we consider not quite up to scratch and its all to do with the light, not that it appears you need to do this. Nice job.

Very cool! Thanks for sharing.

-Garry

Nice job. Damn small parts aren’t they?

nice work with clever thinking!

Wow, I’m amazed at the response to this. :slight_smile:

I must invest in a soldering iron, teach myself to solder and unleash the inner modder. J)

Next on the list is my no-name *bay cheapo torch. Blown LED needs replacing. XRE-R2 already in the mail.

Then it’s onto the C8.

Do it staffyman. Welcome to the club off madness.

I can wholeheartedly recommend a Hakko clone with temperature control such as these from HobbyKing:

I paid £35 for mine six years ago and it’s still working great. At this price it’s a steal.

A very good friend of mine has just telephoned me to say he has a spare soldering iron and would I want it?

HELL YEAH!

Very cool mod!

Hi there oldlumens.

I’ve just been on youtube and found your guide to modding a sol “A Maglite Solitaire mod you can do at home”

Just bookmarked it and will be watching tomorrow for some inspiration as I have another sol that I have just been given. It’s brand new in unopened package. Prime candidate for a high powered LED mod. :bigsmile: