A couple months ago BLF member Hill posted a most excellent tutorial on a triple XP-G2 flashlight he built out of a rather ordinary 3 watt department store flashlight. The build is here. It just so happens I picked up the same light a couple years back at Ocean State Job Lot ("discount" store in Maine). I paid way too much but in the early years of my flashlight sickness I just didn't know better. Try as I might I just couldn't make the darned thing into a light I liked. Hill provided a flash of insight with his build but the trick was to use some of his ideas while making something unique. Something like a 26650 p60 host. Hill's post has some pics of the original light, I was too excited to do any "before" pics.
The idea was to use the pill holding part of the light as the new head and use the pill itself as a retaining ring for the p60 module. The new head is pictured from the bottom with the old pill opened up to receive the p60 reflector. This retaining ring screws in from the front.
The next issue was to open up the inner diameter of the battery tube to accept a 26650 cell. A drill bit wrapped in sand paper + drill press + time + welding gloves = success. The next task was to create an insert for the battery tube to receive the p60 module and transfer heat to the body of the light. My solution was to drill out the bottom of a standard 3/4" copper pipe cap to allow the positive spring to poke through and solder on enough copper and brass shimming to make a tight press fit into the body tube. A general mock up is pictured below.
Some of the parts pre-solder. Notice the short piece of 3/4" copper pipe mocked up on the drop in to take the place of the big negative spring.
All soldered and ready to be pressed into the body tube.
The lip on the bottom side is intended to "catch" the shoulder of the battery to prevent shorting against the bottom of the copper insert.
Note the copper ring from the parts pic above is soldered inside the insert.
It took a vice to press the copper insert into the body tube. Strips of soda can aids heat transfer.
The original switch was replaced with an Omten reverse clicky with a large spring soldered to the positive terminal. Copper braid was soldered through the spring.
Since I had done so much with heatsinking in mind I decided to build a drop in just for this host. It consists of an XM-L2 U2 1C on Noctigon soldered directly to the p60 pill and driven with a 4 amp V2 driver set for ascending 3 mode with memory. The reflector is OP.
Since my unit had been thrown into a parts bag with the gusto borne of disgust I painted the body and head a nice dark Toyota green. Hill's bezel was octagon so I made mine round and did some shaping and polishing of the tailcap as well. A standard p60 host lens was just too big so a 26mm AR lens was ordered from KD. All done!
Beamshot is 60 yards to the maple house.
Special thanks to Hill for the motivation.
Thanks for looking,
Brian
