Almost since I started getting interested in flashlights (not very long ago), one of the first things I learned about was P60 drop-ins. The next thing was how bad P60 was with handling heat. Then, the next thing was that “TrustFire use to have a TF-R2 flashlight that was compatible with P60 drop-ins and had better thermal characteristics”.
So, for awhile now, I’ve been trying to get my hands on one of those “mythical” TF-R2 lights. A couple of folks here pointed me to a couple of rather obscure websites that said that they had them (most websites said “out-of-stock”), so I ordered one from each, and, also, I even opened a suggestion ticket with FastTech (FastTech finally posted them on their website this past week!).
Anyway, one of the TF-R2s finally made it here this past week, so I wanted to see how compatible the TF-R2 actually was with a P60 drop-in.
I happened to also just received a drop-in from lightmalls this week (yes, it was a good week :laughing:, this one:
So, that’s the one I tried with the TF-R2 tonight.
Pics follow:
The P60 drop-in from lightmalls:
Front of the P60 drop-in:
Back of the P60 drop-in:
Side-by-side (original TF-R2 on top, P60 drop-in on bottom). Notice that the original is slightly “taller”, i.e., the P60 drop-in is “shorter”. I don’t know if this is the case for all P60 drop-ins. Also, on the P60 drop-in, the area below the threads is slightly wider than the threads:
Looking at the back of the TF-R2 head, you can see the threading that the P60 drop-in will thread into. Also, from the earlier pics of the front and back of the P60 drop-in there weren’t any “holes” to use to help screw the drop-in in:
But, luckily, there were spaces on opposing sides of the drop-in that I could use with my tweezers:
And, then use the tweezers to screw the drop-in into the head:
Here’s looking into the front after putting the reflector and bezel back on the TF-R2:
BONUS: I put the P60 reflector and large spring on the original TF-R2 drop-in:
And then, put it into a gold SF L2x host I have:
And, voila, transplant completed :)!!
A couple of notes:
1) I mentioned about the P60 drop-in being shorter than the original TF-R2 drop-in. I found that, because of this, if I screwed this P60 drop-in all the way into the TF-R2 head, I’d get either no, or intermittent connection. So, for what I did tonight, what I did is I backed the P60 drop-in out a couple of turns and then it worked. In a “real” installation, you might want to install a longer spring onto the P60 dropin (or get a longer battery, which seemed to also work). This might need to be combined with (2) below.
2) Some posts from earlier mentioned having to file down the wider area below the P60 drop-in threads. In my case, I didn’t do that, but what happens is that the wider area prevents screwing the drop-in further. In one of the pics above of the front of the TF-R2 after the P60 drop-in is installed, it may be hard to see, but the emitter is a little too far “back”, I think, and in order to position the emitter further forward, you’d have to reduce the size of that wider area on the P60 pill AND get a longer spring.
This attempt was really more of a test, to see how (or if) a P60 drop-in could really work with the TF-R2, and, from what I did (as seen in the pics above), the answer is definitely “yes”.
P.S. I can’t remember all of the names, but I wanted to thank a bunch of people for their help with getting to this point, and for answering all of my incessant questions, and also, FastTech for bringing the TF-R2 back-to-life :)!!
And, BTW, yes, I did order one of the TF-R2s from them, as soon as I saw JohnnyMac’s post that they were available on FT’s website, so, between that one, plus all the other ones I ordered from different websites, I will have a small handful of these guys, someday soon :)…
