The brass button that touches the battery unscrews so grab it with pliers and unscrew it. Next jam an appropriately sized flat head screwdriver in the hole were the button screws in and pry up on the white plate going around in a circular motion until the white plastic plate pops off, go easy so you don’t crack it. Once the white plate is off there is an outer ring that holds the metal dummy plate in. Drill 3 holes at 12 4 and 8 o’clock in the dummy plate near the outer ring. Use a dent puller or sheet metal screws and some vice grips and pull up on the dummy plate until the outer ring comes loose and the dummy plate will come out and you can now reach the internals to replace the driver. As long as you didn’t damage the outer ring the dummy plate or the plastic plate you can reassemble it with no signs of tampering.
Sounds like a tough job, I will try it.
Thanks!
I love this light!
Does anyone have any idea of another 9 amp driver where the thermal protection isn’t so aggressive? Because I want one now…
It’s 72 bucks on aliexpress, shipped…… Solar & Light. WWEFANS’ store here in BLF
$77.45 to Australians.
This makes me want a modded one even more, but again, I need a 9 amp driver which doesn’t step down too quickly.
Don’t need to mod with driver. Just mod with something that runs a power resistor in parallel. It’s inefficient, but you’d get there quick and it’s also easier to do even for a soldering noob.
I do want to boost my driver output too.
Any advice on how to extract the driver from the light?
I can’t seem to get the white plastic cap off the battery contacts.
Cheers! 
Just an FYI for everyone thinking about this mod. Chris was having problems with the thermal protection on the driver kicking in to early. I thought it was a battery problem because it didn’t happen with my Panasonic CGR18650CHs, but until we figure out what’s going on I don’t recommend this mod at this point.
Well, I can tell you that is happening when I'm running unprotected cgr18650hg cells. However it is also possible that the batteries are sagging to much and that is causing it to decrease brightness. I currently have some 2900 mah unprotected cells on order to test it with those.
Scaru is in possession of the light now. I’ll PM him about the problem.
Look above your post. :P I only have crappy recycled batteries but I ordered some better ones to test it with.
Holy crap you type fast.
Not only do I type fast I did that while working on the heat graph for the STL-V2. :)
Wow! I just tested the light by placing a thermocouple right next to the LED and it reached 202 degrees before thermal protection kicked in. The outside barely got warm. Once the whole thing cools down I am going to repeat the test and measure the temperature at the fins and at the LED. It seems the heatsinking on this light is not up to the challenge.
Just did the second test and it got to 174 degrees before the thermal protection kicked in. The fins were 96 degrees. The heat transfer on this thing is really bad.
Ok, I just took off the plastic spacer and there is plenty of thermal paste and the screws are tightened down. I then redid the test and it got to 105 degrees before it throttled back. I think all this use has discharged my batteries so it may just be the voltage under load is too low.
Now we just have to identify which driver was used, because there are 2 9 amp drivers on kd.
It was this one.
http://kaidomain.com/product/details.S020148
I am still happy with the light because I can run it on Med or Low non stop.
What do you think of this? I don’t really care if it is one mode. I just want some power without bringing out the HID. Otherwise I will have to ask if Erik can do the transistor mod.