It became the host for a friend’s old MC-E he traded back into me to upgrade to an XM-L. All I had to do was unscrew the reflector of this standard (and very used) MC-E drop-in he’d had for over a year, and with the springs, lower it in where it sits well down where the 980L pill was unscrewed with tweezers and removed. Carefully putting the head back on, I just had to be careful to tap the sides to even up the LED. The results - MC-E 980L.
Now, I put a good, old drop-in to use while getting to see what a throwier MC-E would look like (a frosted reflector would sure help)! Does put out a lot of light, I’d say about 540 lumens. Pretty cool that I can now drop in any new upgrade and have the host (and of course, this would work with any 980L knock-off host).
As to the 980L, it started flickering badly, and even after I tightened the tailcap, so it is some kind of bad emitter issue. And suddenly, it got real dim, and that was that.
Just like with people where life is all about getting to know someone and then saying goodbye before we want to, so it is with our LEDs.
ON second thought, this would ideally be recommended for copper pill P60 dropins of good quality, if any. Running the MC-E on high for just a few short minutes gets it to an “angry protest blue” and it dims considerably while the body gets hot fairly close to the crown. Still, has no problem on medium or low. I guess, with the little heatsinking these p60s have, to then take away the screwed on reflector, gives them kind of an additional heat-venting challenge. But no matter. This unit is a trooper and has withstood so much abuse from the non-flashy who had it. Newer and better dropins would do nicely.