About the same. The bezel has lots of friction, but the light engine is just “tight”. Once you break the initial tension, it just spins off. You don’t have to install it super tight, either.
When you seperate the upper and lower head it makes the bezel much easier. I can take my light apart completely by hand.
Everyone buying a kit will still have to take the light apart to do the emitter swap so I don’t understand not selling a complete light engine.
Yes, they are silly both silly tight, better then being glued but still, just silly tight.
this is the only reason I didn’t push a new light engine, I already know of quite a few people that can’t open their lights at all and having opened a few myself, it ain’t easy and almost impossible in some cases. Not something I like doing.
I modded a few of these last week with the mcpcb’s I had and I offered everyone that sent the lights in the chance to save some money by opening the lights themselves. All of them paid me to open it.
I am going to need to get a better strap wrench if that keeps up.
I think a light engine replacement would be nice, depending on the price. Include a nice little plastic case like for a camera lens to keep the one(s) not in use protected and clean.
Once you get the light apart once, theres no need to tighten it up as much as it is from factory
Which is exactly why having an entire swapable head would be great. ie: a GT70 minus the battery tube and carriers. Personally, I won’t buy it unless just the complete head is available.
What your saying ONLY makes sense if the head was much cheaper than the whole light. But that is not the case.
If a complete head is still 90% of the total price you would only be saving 10%. It makes more sense to have 2 complete lights then you don’t have to swap anything. Maybe you could even sell the tube and carriers.
Yes, we talked about this for a little bit but basically the savings of not having the battery tube and carriers would be so small it would not be worth it.
They would have to either order mis-matched quantities of the heads and battery tubes or be left with a bunch of extra battery tubes they can’t use.
And the buyer would end up with 1 and a half lights while saving less then the cost of shipping. It is inevitable that many would later want to buy another batter tube and carriers as well further complicating matters.
Yeah, to me a ‘head only’ option is just silly. And personally, I can’t see many people interested in that high priced option. Just get the whole light.
However, a light engine option makes sense for those who can’t solder. Cause either way, conversion kit or ‘light engine option’……… the light engine has to be taken off.
Just make it crystal clear that it can/might be difficult to remove the light engine initially.
Maybe I have just been lucky… but so far I have not had much of a problem loosening the light engines on any of mine. Just put those bad boys in a properly padded vice & twist.
The bezels were a bit more difficult…. :person_facepalming: . . :+1:
Having opened ~8 of them so far, I have not found such a method, just brute force and luck of the draw.
I had 2 that opened fairly easy (aka, I did it by myself).
The others varied from “I did it by myself but dead lifting felt easier”
To needing 2 Texans straining to get that sucker open, Mere normal men may not of emerged victorious.
Proper strap wrench technique is the only thing I have found that helps. we had 3 guys cranking away on one of these at one point before I found my strap wrench and there is no way in heck it is opening opening up.
Still took 2 of us to get it open with the wrench (1 to man the wrench and the other to hold everything in place to it didn’t slip out of the vice and ruin everything).
It is not impossible but be prepared for a struggle.
I don’t want people spending the money on the conversion kit only to not be able to use it. I would recommend opening your light now before placing the order.
I passed on the first release of the BLF GT, but now I’m really looking forward to the new GT70. That said, as long as the price is under $150 US dollars I’ll buy one… I have plenty of Samsung 30Q button and flattop cells to accommodate this monster. I didn’t request any other options. Maybe I should have?