4.80 AA light from Fast Tech

IIRC, this is the seller he used: Ebay

I ordered five of these and they were shipped on 1/31/15. It shipped next day as I ordered on the 30th. Looks like it took about a month for them to arrive for Jerry so I’ll anticipate about the same. He also has a thread on this light specifically, that’s how I found out about the $2.99 deal.
:slight_smile:

Edit: Jerry and I were posting at the same time :wink:

Thanks to both of you. Gonna order a few.

Here are my results of testing with various batteries. I like the light.
Cree Super Light AA
Lo Tenergy Premium 5hr 30min
Lo Thunder alk 5hr 12min
Lo Everyready alk 5hr 0min
HI Dura ion-co 1hr 39min
Hi EBL 1hr 33min
Lo EBL 5hr 56min

Jerry

Optic replacement mod...

After upgrading driver and the emitter to your choice of XM-L:

Install this TIR: https://www.fasttech.com/products/1108201

...with this isolating disc to center https://www.fasttech.com/products/1581402

...along with a slightly thicker O-Ring to take up the extra space:

=

It turns out to be a perfect fit, and creates a great beam pattern. A decent driver and some high-current 14500s would make this into a crazy-bright pocket light. I installed a Nanjg 101AK; even @ 1.4A using my three-year-old TrustFire cells is very impressive.

Also, how about that annoying keychain nub on the base? No problem there... A dremel, a file, and wrapping up with some rubbing compound clears that up. Now it tailstands! Add a good thick layer of GITD nail polish and you get this:

Nicely done. I had just about given up tracking down a replacement reflector for this light, never thought about a TIR. Any chance of a beam shot?

I don't have the means for a GOOD beam shot, but this should at least give you an idea of the beam profile:

Nice smooth beam pattern, great mod!

Yes indeed, very nice. I’m thinking one of those lenses will be going on my next order. Thanks.

Great mod, i will order the part to see if i like it better than the stock reflector, do you think the TIR would fit an XP-L?

Can you guys help me out though, i totally failed in opening this light :frowning:

Am i supposed to screw out the driver to get access to the pill or what?
The driver looks glued in, or is the head able to screw open in to parts?
I can’t see any seam that would indicate that.

The head unscrews from the battery tube and also unscrews in half for access to the emitter. The driver is a simple press-in IIRC. The optic fits an XM-L so an XP-L should fit fine too. You'll probably want to use the XP centering ring instead though.

Thanks,

Did you buy yours from the ebay seller or fasttech? mine is from ebay.

I think mine is glued together :frowning: it really don’t want to open i can’t even pry the driver out, it already have scrapes all over because it just don’t want to budge.

I guess i will have test some intense heat on to see if it will loosen up the thread lock gunk, i hadn’t planned to use the driver or led anyway.

Nice that the optic will fit the XP-L (sorry i missed that you used a XM-L of course it will fit then :slight_smile: it was the fasttech description that threw me of) & good point about getting the correct XP centering ring.
I don’t have any extra o rings, where did you get yours that was slightly thicker O-Ring & a better fit.

Did you use a copper DTP mcpcb on this, i wonder if the optic+thicker o-ring is including the thicker mcpcb like a noctigon or sinkpad?

Applying intense heat worked :slight_smile: but i melted the reflector+led because i got it to hot :frowning: to bad, now i need that TIR & fasttech aren’t shipping because Chinese new year.

I managed to poked out the driver from led side, it probably was just pressfitted in but i just couldn’t get it moving from the battery side.
EDIT
I just realized that it was probably the wires from the star that held it in place, they where so short it would have been impossible to get it out of the head anyway.

I haven’t even any 14500 batteries anyway so i need to get those first before i can even do anything fun with this :slight_smile: but this is a really nice host now that get to look at all the part separately.

One potential problem i see could be there extremely tiny space for the driver…… i am not sure it is possible to fit a nice FET driver in there, i will have to make some closer measurement for that though.

pics please

Is there something specific you want to see?

I can’t show the reflector and led melted together, because i was disappointed that i did let them get too hot (and they smelled really bad, i did get a slight headache for a couple of hours by it), so i just flushed them as soon as they where cool enough to remove to get them out of my sight :frowning: i used a hot air gun, unfortunately for a bit to long. I stopped as soon as the temp was 150 degrees Celsius on the IR temp meter, that was obviously more than enough so next time i will test lower.
Anyway it is good to know it is this easy to get some thread locks to crumble :slight_smile: i have some Hugsby’s i may want open soon :wink:

I will try to get some pictures taken later in the evening.

EDIT sorry, i can’t upload any pictures for a while, my phone’s Internet/MMS function seems to be down at the moment.

Will this TIR w/spacer work with the stock light? If so, how do you think it would change the beam?

@deputydave: I don't have a light with the stock emitter on hand at this time to check. I assume it would be similar, but much dimmer.

@cajampa: That's interesting that yours is glued. Mine is from FastTech, and I don't think it was glued, but I have the two eBay lights that should be here soon. I'm curious if those will be glued. I'm not sure what the hold-up is; I ordered two lights at the same time from different sellers. The first was shipped without tracking, and I received it a week ago. The second (these two lights) was processed through the Chicago ISC on Feb. 08, then are listed as having arrived at the Chicago USPS facility on Feb. 11. There have been no further updates. I'm hoping they will show up soon.

Thank you sir. In regards to the Ebay version and shipping I experienced the same delay through Chicago, in fact it went from Chicago to Detroit before heading finally to Florida which I thought was odd. Tracking indicates that they’ll be delivered today so that would be a total of 18 days.

@keltex78,
Could you answer these? thanks
“I don’t have any extra thick o rings, where did you get yours that was slightly thicker O-Ring & a better fit.

Did you use a copper DTP mcpcb on this, i wonder if the optic+thicker o-ring is including the thicker mcpcb like a noctigon or sinkpad with your XM-L2?”

The O-ring I used was a spare from my kit... I have a lot of different sized O-Rings that I've purchased and that have been removed from other lights. I just looked through and found one that worked. It's not an unusually thick one, it's just a standard GITD O-Ring like you would use on a P60 host or anything else. It's just a bit thicker than the thin ring that was already on this host. I trimmed it down to fit myself.

I did not use a DTP copper board, just the thin aluminum board that my emitter came with. If you have a thicker PCB, that might make up the difference. Although, I did flatten and polish the shelf the PCB rests on for improved thermal transfer, and that would have lowered my emitter slightly, yours may not need the thicker O-ring.

Yeah :slight_smile: thanks for some really good info keltex78.