Of all the lights that you've bought over the years and there's one that just still needs something, is a PITB, maybe now a beater... and cost too much $ looking back! Well, mine is this UF C2 and it's all that:
On Friday, I just wanted to do an emitter swap, from an XM-L2 to an LH351D, and had soldered in a 5A Convoy driver months ago. What a mess made over time... original reworked and newer solder:
I tested the light in mule mode and everything was great and I was excited, too excited! In the process of putting it all back together, I didn't insulate the reflector enough (PITB #1) and shorted out something. Turns out it was the driver
So, I looked for a replacement 17mm driver and it looked like I was going to rearrange the configuration of two other lights to get this C2 going again. Well, I didn't want to have that much fun and started thinking about what I could do... without solder. I have been looking at some 20mm Convoy retaining rings in the bin and been wanting to use them for something. And, I had an extra 'old' Convoy 20mm, 6 amp driver that could sit under the pill. So I plopped one ring in at the top of the battery tube to rig some type of 'driver press in place' configuration. Here's the shelf (yellow arrow), threading for the brass pill (green) and it sits atop the tube end (shelf), AWESOME!:
Awesome, kinda. After check-fitting and adding more rings, I realized the driver was going to need solder so it doesn't get positioned wrong and get shorted in a different way... BWAAAAAH!
The bright (haha!) side of this is that it can use a higher amp driver and have better electrical contact with negative outer ring on the 20mm driver than the 17mm sitting in the pill. PITB #2 issue was that I could not get higher tail cap amps (poor connection) due to a previous crappy soldering iron, brass pill, etc.
So, not to repeat mistake due to PITB #1, I insulated like crazy:
The results are quite satisfying:
The beam pattern and output is very similar to my D80v.2 with a LH351D, 5000K. With a Molicel P26A, it's measuring almost 6A. As much as I like my D80, I'll probably use the expensive UF C2 'beater' more!