That’s kinda what I did for the D cell lights by using two adapters, one to change D cell to C cell and the other a C cell to 18650. There is a washer on the base of the D cell to C cell adapters that mates with unmodified Mag D cell springs so that there is no need for a spring mod.

I find that the smaller springs on C cell Mags work fine with 18650’s and even smaller cells.