Awesome numbers Dale, did you have to bypass both positive end springs?
It no longer has springs, of any kind. Originally it had a spring between the charger and positive end of cell, another on the opposite side of the charger to contact the driver positive contact, which is a thin brass disc.
Now I have the cell fitted between a brass spacer that is adjusted with the threaded white plastic cover that once allowed the red/green charge indicator lights to show.
Very cool! Do you have an endless source of quad pcbs? I can’t find them anywhere, except austrailia, shipping is terrible.
This.
Got more direct copper quad MPCBs? I need some!!! 
Awesome mod Dale.
Next step: Open up the battery tube enough to fit an 18500.
- remove the copper spacer from the battery tube.
- bend a strip of copper into a ring and insert it into the head as a stop to prevent the head from screwing in all the way.
- do the same if necessary at the tail.
I looked at an 18500, much too long. Besides, where is there an 18500 that supplies the kind of power the Efest Purple IMR18350 will give?
I bought a few quad boards for a project that didn’t pan out, so …
Dale, just checking, did you do runtime with the 16340 and 18350? I’m just thinking since it comes with that awesome small form factor, might be good to keep to that form but with your awesome 1493 OTF lums to wow friends instead of ramping up to almost 18650 form, where most torches congregate.
That said, duration might be a whole PITA experience.
The light is making 2187 lumens from an 18350. It looks just like it did before. (Well, it’s a quad now instead of a triple) I have the charger working outside of the light, seems to be a nice little charger in it’s own right.
Haven’t done any kind of run-time tests, just got it done this morning and then my SP-03 came in and I spent the day building it with MTN’s SRK driver and a massive tellurium copper pill I made for it (all today, just got done)
Two fairly tough builds, one long day, I’m exhausted! lol
Update:
I now have the 10440 and 14500 variants of this light as well. With the 16340 being heavily modified I’m leaving the other 2 stock. Swapping in a better cell makes for a nice improvement and the built in charger still makes it a very nice EDC style light that can be recharged almost anywhere with the battery bank for back-up.
The 10440 is a bit on the odd side with it’s VERY narrow tube, the 14500 is sweet, a nice balance.
The 16340 is still amazing in it’s form factor, short squatty potent little light that easily fits in a watch pocket. Crazy small. These would make nice gifts to a flashlight noob, with the USB charger built in no extra bits and pieces required. They even come with a decent cell already inside, simply remove a plastic disc that is blocking current and you’re up and running.
The only thing to watch for is that you’re getting the new UI as compared to the original one. If I’d gotten the new UI in the 16, I probably wouldn’t have modded it at all. 
Where’d you purchase your 14500 version from so that I’ll know I’m getting the newest UI?
I got it on Massdrop. Just pay attention to what they say the UI does, it should start on Moon with the first click to wake it up, a double click from off is instant Turbo (I’m blind now, had to actually do it to make sure I was remembering right)
Dale, did you ever figure out if the newer retaining ring without notches is threaded or not? Thinking about tearing into mine soon but want to get the switch cover off so I can put it in the vise to crack loose the bezel.
Yes, it’s threaded. I have one right here that I coincidentally just put on the charger… easily removed the threaded switch retaining ring with my fingernails.
Just did some modification to the PT-16 by swapping emitters and fitting the optic, I pulled the 1.5A XP-G2’s in favor of the new 3A XP-L W2 1D. The opening for the emitter in the optic is narrower than I’d hoped so I used a ball nosed end mill bit to fit the optic to these new emitters. While it doesn’t make a lot more lumens, it should be producing a lot less heat as the 3 XP-L W2 1D are running at such a low power consumption.
11.834 Lumens
81.42
337.76
1138.5
Slightly more lumens, nice tint, perhaps more heat efficient? At the very least I know I’m ready to turn it into a quad with one more emitter and then I can pull the driver and piggyback in a ramping firmware FET for what should prove to be some serious bumpage.
I have the pt18 and pt14 and I must say that these are my most luxurious feeling lights. Very nice lights! I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet. The tint is too cool for me. It washes colors out and reflects a lot of unusable white back at me when I’m trying to look for something I’ve dropped onto the carpet under my work area. (By the way, that carpet has to go! I spend half my day searching for all the things I drop and bump as I’m stumbling around working on stuff)
I wanted to try to reflow some of the nichia 219c 4000k high cri but I’m afraid the lower vf will result in less power. Seems to be the case with most high cri options. Any high cri options with a higher vf. In the 4000-5500 temp range though.
Ok, just because I could, I put a 15mm FET driver with ramping firmware in this PT-16, Quad XP-L W2 1D emitters under a Carclo quad optic. Doubled copper under the emitters.
It’s making 1801 lumens on a rested and partially used Red Efest Button Top 16340. 
Edit: The charger is still in the top of the battery tube, perhaps on a warmer day I will remove the charger and bore the tube for an 18350 and see if I can’t break the 2000 barrier. On the other hand, it’s nice to have the charger still intact….
A close copy, the SR71, will take an 18350 and should be a great quad mod host as well.
For the price, the blackwater lights do not look as nice to me. I think it’s the pinaple knurling or something. But I’ve never held one so can’t say for sure. I do like the tail cap with lanyard hook option though.
I put a 20ga spring bypass through the charger pcb, it had small coil springs on each side of the board, I put a slightly larger one on the battery side to allow the internal 20ga wire to coil slightly under compression.
Fresh charge on the little Efest V2 16340 gives me 2294.25 lumens. Works for me!
(for now) I have some 1000mAh 15A continuous Efest 18500’s en-route, I’ll make a couple of copper or brass spacers ( one on each end so the o-rings stay covered…even aluminum would work) and bore out the battery tube so the 18500 will work and the lumens output should go up considerably.
Will post when I get that done, probably early next week. We’re at 25 and dropping, supposed to have maybe single digit temps overnight, yuck!
Edit: By the way, it looks like the little Efest V2 16340 is delivering 5.5A at the tail. The 15mm driver has one of the little 3 legged MOSFET’s on it. I can’t expect it to perform like an SIR800DP or something, but it’s doing really well so far.
Brass spacers? I’ll be interested to see how this works out:)