Another fascinating project in the making! Thanks so much for the detailed explanation and meticulous photo tour. This one goes Frontpage and into the “Featured Mods” section.
@RBD - Thank you, but I want to use IMR. I do not think anything else will give me 3 amps per battery. If worse comes to worse, I will buy four of the Efest, but I will wait to see what everyone says. I think they will have to be IMR, to give the full potential to the light.
That second last shot came as a bit of a surprise. In my deference I have never had anything to do with Mag lights. How small are they. I’m looking forward to your beam shots. Did you think of maybe putting a handle on it. This may help to prevent it rolling as well as something to hold the torch(s) with. Again you have raised the bar in my book with your own ingenious style. Thanks.
I think you are right as icr cells are limited to ~2C. This seller is pretty fast and very reasonable. Some one near you might be able to charge them as they usually ship with half charge.
That was the seller I was thinking of. If I do it, I will have to get a charger. I don't know that I will though. There's already about $150 tied up in this build if I consider everything involved, so I'm not really enthusiastic about throwing $50+ more into batteries and a charger.
This light really has turned out to be a one of a kind hopeless case. It looks great and I know it works, but it is a real ornery light when it's time to change batteries. It's just not made right for battery changes and the cut down thing was a mistake. I should have left the bodies 2AA and made a totally different way to hold the tail ends together. This one ends up being just a shelf queen, for if anyone has to change batteries more than once, they will want to leave it on the shelf. They are just not all winners, when it comes to mods. I may have to just tear it down to try and save what I can in the way of components, but I hate to do that.
Actually, I probably need to rework the tail end. The bodies need to have something that surrounds the tail ends and holds them without moving. I probably could figure out something, but I don't know yet.
It looks pretty damn cool to me and I’m sure something could ease the battery changes, maybe a screwdriver slot in each cap with a bit of your file work to dress it up. I have 2 efest 14500’s and could order two more, charge the bunch and ship them. They’d be ok for testing/beamshots but I would be reluctant to use them as a set for run time testing even though the two I already have have only been cycled a few times.
Thanks, but don’t go buy anything. I would feel bad about that. I have to figure out something with the tail end, that’s for sure. If I don’t buy batteries, I will most likely come up with a way to use 12 eneloops for testing and beam shots.
I like the screwdriver slot idea!! The tail caps aren't really that bad, but it's the fact that the bodies can "wiggle" and misalign that is the real problem. I think that the copper plate needs to actually fit around each body, so that it does not move at all. That is what I am going to look at. I will also look at some kind of a slot.
Well, if r-sales can charge them for me, I will get four of their Efest batteries. If not, I will use eneloops somehow. I tore down the light tonight to make changes to the copper end plate. I am making it so the bodies are captured in the plate so they can't shift. Maybe tomorrow or Saturday I will have revision 1 done.
Great job. Another one-of-a-kind O-L specialty! You HAVE to give us more glamor shots of that beauty. So much time and effort put into it, let's see that bad boy (or girl?) from every possible angle.
She must be a female, since she’s fought me every step of the way.
I guess I will have to take a few more shots of her, including beam shots. I am ordering the batteries today, so sometime next week for the beam shots and the glamour (sales thread shots) too.