I’m trying to unscrew the bezel off my FW21 Pro. Really not happy with the excessive floodiness of the XHP50.2 emitters and would like to dedome them or put different emitters in.
I just can’t get the bezel off. I have tried holding it in some thin silicone sheets so my hands don’t slip, tried heating it up on turbo for a bit, even removed the head and heated up with a heat gun to the point it was unbearably hot to touch, even hit it with a rubber mallet quite a few times and it won’t budge. Any ideas?
If heat and a secure grip doesn’t work, and it doesn’t look like there’s anywhere for me to put some penetrating oil, what else can I do?
Even the driver retaining ring is completely stuck.
Never had this issue with any of the Convoys I’ve modded, just saying…
Seriously, f**k Lumintop. It took me around 3 hours to unscrew the bezel which included heating it nearly to the point of the solder desoldering itself and bashing it with a heavy rubber mallet after getting it so hot. This is all following a penetrating oil soak, then putting the head into a vice and damaging it a bit in the process.
It’s absolutely shocking the amount of recklessness they have put into the assembly of this product. There was absolutely no grease on the threads whatsoever from the factory. In fact, I have never seen such clean flashlight threads ever. Even the tiniest bit of grease could have avoided this entire drama. I have my completely unopened FW21 X9l and FWAA a quick attempt as a benchmark and they were very easy to unscrew the bezels on.
I have a FW3A on it’s way and a B01 currently pending delivery. It’s just a shame it’s too late to cancel the order.
Almost as bad as Sofirn putting screws into my 2x SP36 BLF where the tail screws could not be removed without using a heat gun to cook the entire thing following days of using penetrating oil on those screws made out of some kind of cheese.
I’m shure this is not the case with the threads of the Lumintops you are about to receive. None of my Lumintops was significantly harder to disassemble than any of my Convoys.
my FW21 Pro bezel is stuck too, but I don't have any need to unscrew it for now... Just tried to unscrew it, because of this post.
It won't be funny if I break the glass and will have to unscrew bezel, to replace it.
After being a little too aggressive with a knife, I unfortunately damaged one of the LEDs and now it’s half blue. I want to replace them all, ideally with a drop in MCPCB so I don’t have to reflow the emitters myself.
Definitely want something a bit more throwy than the stock XHP50.2. I was thinking of XHP50.3 HI in a warmer tint than I currently have, like 4000K. Or alternatively SFT40 but then not sure which optic I will need to replace it with due to the size difference of the SFT40. Any ideas? I really would like to get the light working properly.