Modding a Trustfire TR-A9 - It's done, Beam shots are Up.

A little music while you read,

Well you already know I am going to mod the TR-A9. I'm not going to do a whole lot with it. It will have an XM-L2 T6 3C in it, with a DrJones driver and I probably.... maybe.... possibly.... won't drive it too awful hard. I'm not even sure if it will be 4XAA in series or 4X14500 in parallel yet. I guess I will just wing it and see what flies. I want to make it bright, but manageable and an everyday user.

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Hare's the light broken down to it's basic components. The "pill" houses the led, driver, smd switch and the back side of the driver is the upper contact plate.

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The star is glued down with adhesive, (probably Fujik). The heat sink is aluminum, but I don't think it's anodized. I think it's painted black. I will know for sure later on.

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With the driver off, you can see inside the pill. It's hollow for the driver and it's fairly thin. I will need to work on that a little.

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Driver

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The back side of the driver board is the upper contact plate.

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I worked on the light some more tonight and I also want to show how the heat sink/pill fits in the light and where it makes body contact.

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The pill is in the body.

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Without the body. You can see the areas where the pill sets in. There's three of them (only two shown here). The fourth is cut away more, for the switch.

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I stripped the driver components and soldered on the pos and neg so I can wire to the new driver. (That's some ugly AA that I gobbed on the solder joints, just before it got too hard).

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The contact plates were already modified. If I didn't know better, I would say the original set-up was 4S not 2S/2P. I didn't have to do a thing here.

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The pill is back together. I added a few grams of metal inside it. Wired up the DrJones driver, with 2 extra chips, so it will be over 3.5 amps and buttoned it all back up.

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I didn't change the led, since this is already an XM-L2 and the tint wasn't bad at all in the stock light.

Tested and ready to go...

Tomorrow (today), I can do the cosmetic mods and finish the light. It will now run on 4xAA NiMHS in series.

Here's the finishing shots. The light is done.

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That's it. It turned out well and it wasn't hard to do. I used Fujik around the pill so when I pushed it in, it would make better contact with the body. I still think it would be a better light for an MT-G2 than the EA4 would be.

Beam Shots

These are all mouseovers. I used the shots from the original A9 and the modified A9.

The MODIFIED light Photos are Mouse Out and the Original photos are Mouse Over. The same settings were used in both shoots.

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I think I done good. It's brighter than stock. It heats up Fast. That tells me the heat is getting to the body like it should.

That's all Folks.

subscribed!

getting ready for another OL masterpiece :slight_smile:

Can’t wait to see how this one turns out!!!

Looks interesting. Looking forward to the mod.

That heatsink is kind of meh compared to what I was hoping. Don't think this is worth dropping $40 plus. Can't twait to see how this turns out though.

My thoughts exactly, kinda dissapointed…

Well considering the wall thickness and how it sits in the body, it’s about 10 times more surface area than the EA4.

I'm sure it will come down in price, but I would still rather mod this than an EA4. I will have to take a photo showing how it sits in the body.

Updated the OP with more photos. It's almost done.

nice teardown with pictures! you make it look so easy.

Is the driver you used a drJones nanjg 105c 8+2 amc’s you added???

I’ve just finished listening to the video and now you tell me your nearly finished? Are we in some sort off time warp? I’m sure I read somewhere that it was hot and you may take awhile to finish this as you may only get an hour in the morning. Or am I asleep and dreaming?

I like to bitch. If it ain’t worth bitchin about, it ain’t worth doin.

Besides, it was an easy build and it cooled off after the front moved through.

The light is done now and I will do beam shots tonight.

Can’t wait to see the beam shots!!

Is the bezel actually SS or just bare aluminum?

I liked the song too. And I’ve never heard it till now :exmark:

awesome!

It’s SS

i like the looks of this light now. black and silver…oakland raiders color. plus it has a side switch! never even heard of this light till now, looking forward to beam shots.

Beam shots are up, in the OP.

You never cease to amaze me.

Nice job O-L, decent gains without changing the emitter!