F13 mod - need suggestions

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
1

I ordered and received two of those F13’s during the GB $9 sale. They worked really well and I liked them quite a bit. I applied the silicon grease to the threads (after using some steel wool and wiping them clean like OL demonstrates in one of his videos). That’s the good news. The bad news is that I didn’t realize I knocked off the LED’s in both when reassembling the reflector and head. Yeah, I screwed up.

Well not a total loss as these are two of the lights I am intending to try my hand at modding. So I did some research here and it looked like Noctigon is a popular item. So I ordered this from Mountain Electronics:

CREE XM-L2 U2 LED on 20mm COPPER MCPCB

So here is my question; is the driver that comes stock in these $9 F13’s a good driver or should I upgrade to something else? I may have missed it, but I didn’t see on the GB site what type of driver it uses. I’m not looking for a spot light that melts the light, but I would like a bright light that has good run time. Suggestions and links are welcome.

Thank you. :slight_smile:

2

Its your call on whether you keep the stock driver or not. There is a post somewhere on changing a wire so it is direct drive on high. I have had limited success in getting rid of the next mode memory with the pencil trick. The greatest output gain can be had by putting in an XML-2 of known quality and a different isolator along with shortening the reflector housing to suit. This light now has a dedomed emitter in it which has improved throw immensely again.

https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/27705

Good luck and have fun with your mods.

3

I stayed with the stock driver (partly because it’s an odd size). I did the DD wire shift, soldered a resistor on top of the capacitor for no next mode memory, and of course, put goo under the emitter. Now, it’s a perfect cheap and cheery light.

4

Thank you both. MRsDNF thank you for the link to your thread on the mod.

5

Personally I thought the beam on the F13 was pretty dreadful. It had some kind of white spacer/locator as the bottom of the reflector. It caused what looked like a perfectly circular very large hot spot, but it had no throw what so ever.

I swapped in an XP-G2 NW on a Noctigon, did the wire mod for higher output and the pencil mod to get rid of the memory. It’s actually ok now, but chunky due to the 26650.

6

some info in the group buy thread:

From my reply in it:

Although I’d be tempted to look at doing de-dome if I was doing it again.

7

New question:

As I mentioned above in the OP, I broke the LED’s off the star. So that brings up the opportunity to get some experience reattaching the LED. I looked at YT for guidance (thanks again OL). So the question come to mind, what LED should I put on these stars? New area for me so I’m all ears as to what can go on these stars. As always, links are big time helpful. Thanks again.

:slight_smile:

8

Just my opinon, but I would just buy the new emitters already mounted on mcpcb’s. If you buy from fasttech for instance, bare emitters are the same price as buying them on an aluminum star. If you buy from Mtn, most of his LED’s are pre-mounted on Noctigons, he only stocks a select few bare emitters.

9

ill post what im doing to mine in a hr or 2 :)

10

Okay, did my first official mod with a soldering iron today. As mentioned in the OP I accidentally scraped off the LED in both F13’s I purchased from the GB $9 buy. So I ordered that Noctigon CREE XM-L2 U2 LED on a 20mm COPPER MCPCB that I have linked above. First time I’ve ever soldered anything but my buddy and I were able to desolder the old star out, apply the Arctic Silver thermal paste and solder in the new star. And best of all….it worked!!

:party:

Don’t have time to do the second F13 so it will wait for another day. But at least I’ve done it once and have a little experience under my belt.

11

Well done deputy. Before you know it you'll be building lights with wights custom drivers.

12

F13 reflector spacer is a bit lame, i did removed mine
When you did that the emitter should be lifted with 3mm- i used two 20mm 1.5mm Cu CPU-GPu spacers- its way better this way
At the end you get something like C8 but 26650……have mixed feelings about that light

13

I was going back through this thread and remembered your post. Did what you were doing work?

14

yea but my brother stole aka (took) my light, what i did was add a copper sink and a Noctigon xp32 board and made a triple using 3 XP-L's with a single sided DD driver

15

Does anyone have any suggestions/links for a good 22mm driver for the F13? Or is there something like a 17mm to 22mm copper ring? I’ve got 17mm to 20mm copper rings coming for my SK98 project but can’t seem to find a good 22mm driver or conversion rings. Suggestions/links welcomed. :slight_smile:

16

You could go with 17x22x1,5mm copper sealings. Some may fly around in your toolbox.
There are some availible on ebay with free intl. shipping : link
You’ve got to make sure that the driver won’t fall in the flashlight somehow, if it gets pressure from the battery. Might want use a smaler sealing from behind and solder it all together or so.

17
18

You might try using the original driver as a contact board as I did here. Check the last post. You may wish to wrap the new driver in kapton tape for insulation.