26650 is to large for the body, a 25500 will fit perfectly
Im about to mod mine, i’m looking at installing a clicky button into the bottom along with a proper driver pill in the head, something like this gear from FF
How is the heat with that resister bypass, does the light get really hot at 2600mah? I might rip mine apart now and do this myself
Also I tested the battery carriage and that outputs 5v, changing the resister in the pill wouldn’t that over volt the LED, would be safer to alter the battery carriage so boost mode was on constantly
EDIT: I just ripped mine apart then, pill is 21.5mm, one could easily fit a regulated booster power supply to this thing, bypass the resisters in the tail, alter the carrier to run series and parallel giving you 3v with long run time, there is many possibilities even when using the AAA setup.
A friend just bought a Lenser P7.2 for his bike and asked me to bring some of my cheapie lights for a comparison. Funny enough it was one the same as the Zeusray that impressed him as it has a similar flood pattern but outlasted it in run time when left on side by side. He can’t believe the performance for the price so I can see him buying a couple. Of course the Lenser is in a different league when it comes to build quality.
I loved my P7 then I gave it away to my friend, then within to weeks it got stolen which made me quite sad.
The lenser is a funny torch. It divides people. What I found was exactly like the comments above, some people love it and those who don’t, really hate it. However most of them have never even held one.
Personally I liked it a lot. Quality was superb. It was also a proper zoomer with no loss of lumens when zoomed out. They are a bit expensive but so are a lot of lights.
I have so say though shortly after buying my p7 I bought a Klarus p2a which I liked much more, but I still miss the Lenser.
The 4 x AAA configuration makes up somewhat for the lack of regulation, in addition to allowing more of the battery to be used. A smaller fraction of the maximum battery voltage is the minimum forward voltage of the LED, compared to 3 x AAA, so the current is more stable than it would be with the lower voltage and lower resistance to have the same peak current. For simple mod., it is a great advantage, at least with NiMH cells.
I just ordered one from Fasttech!
big problem is you WILL reverse a nimh cell.vf of the led will allow it to run ok on 3 cells.
if your cells are very consistant this is not as much of a problem(eneloops).
Since there is no electronic driver, there is no low voltage warning. So if the cells are not matched, it may run one of them down to zero voltage or below while still running on the voltage of the other three. That would ruin a NiMH cell or make an alkaline cell leak. It is similar to the problem when running an SK-68 on a lithium ion cell, though not that bad. One should use only matched cells and change or recharge them when it gets dim.
In fairness to LED Lenser and to all those other brands that I usually consider to be too expensive for a second look, there is a very long dramatic thread here about Zeusray’s quality control problems.
I usually don’t see any significant advantage to the more expensive lights, so I have remarked about the apparently well chosen optics of the LED Lenser and about the problems with the later Zeusrays. The Zeusray is a good comparison for performance, but maybe not for price.
I have a P7.2 from Fasttech now. Though the pictures show the side with the blank flat, it does say LED Lenser on it. It comes with a multiple language users manual that says it is from Zweibrüder Optoelectronics GmbH, and in a box with LED Lenser inside and outside the top. I see no indication that it isn’t genuine. It looks to me that it is the same thing, just aimed at a more price sensitive market. But I don’t have a high priced one, sold as genuine, to compare it to.
It throws like a pretty hot aspheric, even with all its resisters still in the circuit. The only other light I have that puts nearly such a large fraction of the LED’s output into the main beam has another type of Fresnel lens. The transition from spot to flood is better than that of the Coast HP1 but not as smooth as that of an aspheric. I like the passive mode control, but I also plan to short out the resistors in the head. The manual brags about the fact that unregulated alkalines die slowly.
I am not sure about the aesthetics yet. It is simple, but it has a hint of cheapness in the shape (!). At least it is much better than the Coast HP1, though much worse than the Yezl t9. It needs anti-roll flutes, knurling on the head and more complex curves. They should hire a potter to prototype shapes and the NC lathe programmer that did the SS-5039.
I give it a one and a half, on a scale where the “number 3 AA zoomie” and the Coast HP1 get zero and SK-58 and CNQ zoomy host are around nine and the Yezl t9 is ten.
I like the matte finish and the lack of fins on a moderate power light. On the other hand, there is too much corner at the base of the sliding head. There is no knurling at all on the head where it is needed to work the zoom. The matte finish gives good grip, but it would be easier to zoom if the head had more shape. It would also be nicer to hold if the handle had some shape to it.
Maybe worst of all, it looks like it could have been made from thin aluminum pipe with a little spinning but only minimal machining.
The zoom does move nicely. Partly because the head slides on two separated o-rings.
Added: the Zeusray wins on feel and appearance, especially on visibly being well made. I give it a five.
I shorted out the resistors in the head, as shown above, to increase current. In my example, the LED is now over-driven in turbo mode. With the button held down it starts bright then turns blueish, apparently from over heating the phosphor. I will check between the star and pill.
I dabbed some Arctic Silver on the front of the pill, and it works fine now. I don’t have a small enough star shaped screw driver, but a regular flat one did it. There was some white stuff sticking the star to the plastic cover, I don’t know what for. I wonder whether they are all without thermal compound or if Fasttech gets rejects.
A useful position is with the head slightly pulled back from full forward. The TIR reflector spot gets smaller and the aspheric lens part forms a halo around it.
In turbo mode it ran the cells down in 10 minutes, so it is drawing 3 or 4 amps. This is good with an XP-G2 with a direct thermal star and a solid pill, but it wasn’t good with no thermal compound between the small star and the pill. It was designed to have that much engineering margin for reliability. The lack of thermal compound is clearly a defect. The question is whether I saved half the price by doing my own quality control, or whether the full price ones also have used up their engineering margin in poor quality control.
With fully charged white Eneloops and a fully charged Efest 2.5 Ah, 35 A purple IMR 18450.
The LED Lenser is on high (not turbo) with the resistors in the head shorted out and Arctic Silver added.
Lenser on the left and a TangsFire C8 on the right
Lenser on left and Zeusray on right.
On one hand the Lenser is more expensive and has a simple mod. and a defect fixed. On the other hand, it has an XP-G2 and NiMH cells versus XM-L2s and an IMR cell in the other two. The optics is just a piece of thermal plastic. It can’t be expensive to produce in large numbers.
This is an early ZeusRay that works well as far as I know. The TangsFire seems to be a good example of a C8. There is some of the TangsFire’s spill behind the Lenser, but this is not a large effect. The Lenser is substantially brighter in turbo mode, but that required the button to be held down.
