Ultrafire F13 mod

The F13 is a nice light, takes a 26650, is nice and beefy, could run some decent power and still stay relatively cool. The UI, though, was rather annoying. H/M/L plus blinkies… yecch. Dis-co-nnect!

So, rather than suffering in silence, I figure I’d share my modding misery. :smiley:

Anyway, I was doing this already, didn’t want to stop (inertia, and all that), so just grabbed some Truly Crappy cellphone pix while I was already in-progress.

Start with a standard F13 ( http://www.gearbest.com/led-flashlights/pp_5499.html ). The driver was a µC with parallelled surface-mount chip-resistors to provide the ballast. So expect the current to be hideously unregulated from a fully-charged cell to almost depleted.

I chose this driver

instead. I don’t intend to run it from multiple cells, but it’s a somewhat hard-to-find 22mm driver. I’ve got plenty of 17mm and 20mm drivers, but never needed a 22mm driver. Now, I did. I got the 1-mode (on/off) to not have blinkies, and because the F13 should handle that power pretty well for an extended time.

These are they, nicely delivered as a single “stick”, 2-wide, for the total of 5 drivers I got. I snapped off the oddball one and filed down the periphery to let it fit easily into the head.

Well, first off, I had very limited headroom inside the head, what with a big honkin’ toroid taking up lots of space, plus the wires being looped through and coming out the hole. So I had to snake the wires out of the hole to come off the board directly. That got me this

plus, you can see the old driver on the table, with those 8 parallelled resistors on-board. Oh yeah, I had to desolder the spring from the original driver and solder it to this bugger.

Also, I didn’t want the wires wrapped around the toroid to be pressed up against the shelf that the LED sits on, so I took a PTFE disc insulator ( https://www.fasttech.com/p/1138102 ) and placed it inside the head on the opposite side of the shelf, thus:

Next came the emitter. Had my choice of a U2-4C ( https://www.fasttech.com/p/1574600 ), or a T6-3B ( https://www.fasttech.com/p/1425002 ). Chose the latter, a little whiter but a lower brightness bin, vs slightly warmer but brighter. Maybe my next one will be the 4C…

Didn’t mangle anything, thankfully. Damned wires had a life and will of their own, and didn’t want to be soldered to the star, the way they wriggled out almost every time I attempted it.

(Hey, I did say these were crappy pix…)

Anyway, I can’t find my microscopic tube of Arctic Silver 5, so for now it’s the reflector pressing the nekkid star to bare metal in the head. When I find it, I’ll grease it up. Don’t want to use thermal epoxy, or just glop on some Fujik, so I’ll wait ’til the AS5 turns up.

Anyway, here’s the finished product, which looks from the outside exactly the same as it did before I started. :smiley:

And yes, it says XM-L2! No more of the omnipresent “XML-T6” [sic] like on cheap craptastic lights.

So, that’s pretty much it. Had some problems with the switch, the insulating spacer coming out from the retaining ring and keeping the switch-board from making contact, but I ironed that out. Lights up nice and bright, does seem like it could be almost in the 4-figures lumen-range, but haven’t taken any tailcap-current measurements or anything yet.

I’m not too thrilled with the beam, as the hotspot is a little fuzzy, and it’s a little ringy. Wondering if I should shave down the included spacer / centering-ring in the reflector to let the LED sit a hair deeper in the reflector. Any beam-gurus, feel free to chime in with advice!

Hey mate cool mod!

You can find heaps of XHP50/70 drivers in that size.

Ringy beam could possibly be fixed by shaving the gasket down

Hjeh, tnx. It was more to get rid of the lousy UI and resistors, and get what should be more or less constant current. I figured if no one ever used one of those drivers, it’d be helpful to post the “mod”.

I’m kind of afraid to try it with 2 18350s, because I don’t want anything to pop and have to go through this alllllll over again. :smiley:

Damn, didn’t measure the tailcap current last night. Was meaning to, but got sidetracked.

But alas, it’s more like 700lm from a single cell. Lit up the room nicely via ceiling-bounce, but when comparing it to my VG10 on high, it wasn’t as bright. Was more like my ~700lm ’502, in about the same 5000K-5500K CT.

Still, I’ll take it. More runtime, less worrying about overheating, etc. Wasn’t even getting the F13’s head warm, let alone hot, so a) I need to grease it up with AS5 to make me feel better, b) my 26650 might need charging (been using that in my DV-S9 for quite a while), and/or c) the F13 soaks up and dissipates heat very nicely.

I bought a single cell boost driver from kaidomain in that size it would go awesome with a xhp50 and 26650.

If you ever want to upgrade in the future.

Got a part number?

I will do you one better :stuck_out_tongue: They have more options for 22mm drivers.
http://www.kaidomain.com/p/S025264.FX35-22mm-3V-4_5V-2_5A-5-Mode-Boost-Driver-Circuit-Board-for-Cree-MT-G2

Oldlumens done heaps of mods with these lights he liked them.

I will have to buy some my self and play with them they are a fairly cheap host.

The driver i bought was a different colour. Fasttech just got some in the other day also i was looking at there email i am not sure about the sizes.

If your happy with the lights leave them but maybe in the future you will want a pocket rocket.

Ugh, same insufferable blinky modes…

I just looked again at FT, either I completely missed them (doubtful) or they just got in an assload of new 22mm drivers. All for XHP50s/-70s, and all seem to need 2 cells.

Maybe I could use the pair of 18350s I got (wasteful to use an 18mm cell when you can pack in a nice fat 26mm cell), but I hate putting cells in series, and I don’t want to get 26350s or whatever, just for this. <grumble>

Well, it had better be a big pocket for a ’13, at least. :smiley:

I saw in the spacer thread that someone was really happy with the spacer to make a F13 into a triple.

Eh, I’m not into floody lights (yet). I like the pretty tight beam of the ’13. Almost as tight as a C8…

Yea the drivers from fasttech are for dual cells i was thinking about buying some F13s and put the 4amp driver in and use a shaved down XHP50. Just for a laugh i am all against using none versatile flashlight but then again i always run my C8 with a XPG3 that does 8amps. Using the 26350 the run time should be decent even 30mins at 2500+ lumens is good.
I think the throw would be decent?

Richard has a 22mm driver, and you can choose firmware, driver current and spring/no spring:

At that point, there’d be lots of overlap with my L2. And that I can run with 1 or 2 26650s. With lots more runtime. :smiley:

I’m confused already as to which of my “active” lights I should take to go see what’s making noise in the backyard, or looking for the armadillo, seeing if the cat ate his food, etc., that it’s already a long drawn out decision. Adding another light to the mix would only confuse me more.

Yep, saw that a while back, before ordering these donks from AX.

Problem is, the way those 7135s are situated, they might probably would clear the thin ledge on the LED side, but no way would the retaining ring go over those on the spring/battery side.

Same situation with the NANJG 105C vs 105D and the retaining rings on S2+es. The C (with stars) will fit, but the D (no stars) won’t.

Just recalled, I was debating getting it anyway and just desoldering the 7135s on the spring side. Only 3A instead of 6A, but it would fit the ring.

Do you need EagleEye X6 host for $ 10.99?

Regards,

Ooh, nice price, but I think I’m all flashlighted out for now. :smiley:

Always liked the shape/style of the BLF/EE X6…

I just suggested … :slight_smile:

You were looking for a driver, and now, apparently, you are well guided in the proposals.
What driver (XHP50.2) can you advise for my “project”?

I put this boost driver into the F13 with a XHP35 HI and it was pretty nice.

H2-C Boost Driver

Haven’t used any boost drivers except for Mag mods, so don’t have any advice on that.

The one above looks interesting, though. Would rather no blinkies, but…

Give me a link please

Yea I bought the other model of the single cell XHP35 boost driver. The original one

The one in msg 15, that D10ten posted.

Points to a driver on KD.

I also want to try - the host is already going.

What is the diameter of a star?
And can I try XHP50.2 with this driver?