I'm hoping you're handle of nofear is descriptive of you because getting at that emitter is not an easy task. Fenix uses copious amounts of hell glue on all the key threads in their lights. The pill of the TK35 threads out from the inside of the head in the standard counter clockwise direction. There are two holes on either side of the pill into which a spanner or other two-pronged tool can be inserted to do the twisting. I may have drilled those out to make them deeper but I don't recall.
My unit was clamped in a vise(lens down) with the vice jaws covered in tire inner tube rubber while I used a pair of sturdy needle nosed pliers gripped in an adjustable wrench to unscrew the pill. The sides of the head are slightly dinged on either side, the back of the pill is marked from tool slippage and the needle nosed pliers were destroyed. I too was destroyed and felt my exertions for a couple days after.
You may make things easier by vac-bag sealing the flashlight head and boiling it on the stove for a while to melt the glue. I tried that with a tk41 and didn't feel it helped at all.
I put in mine XML2 T6-4C. Also use standard xm-l centering pad instead of original insulator.
I also added R100 resistor parallel to existing ones.
This put new life into this torch.
Mike
I still have this thing kicking around, and while it has been superseded by many other, newer lights in my collection, I’m looking at improving this one since it still runs. I’ll either be adding an XM-L2 U3 bin emitter, or adding a new XP-L2 emitter with new board. I have to find a large enough XP-G board to fit into this light and probably modify it to fit as well. The fact that the board is screwed down may be a challenge.
Anyway, I think what happened in my case is a lack of thermal paste didn’t create the nicest connection, and over time my 3.8amps burned out the old XM-L emitter. It ran for quite a while before giving up the ghost, though.
So the hope is I can find the proper board to drop the XP-L2 into the light in the near future!
Nice mod ..., but I'll suggest you to look at the D1 diode (fly back) , is a 3 Amps Schottky diode ! The whole current stored in the coil will pass thru this one when the mosfet is in "off " ...So , better change it with a 5 Amps Schottky ( or bigger , if the space and the copper layers is enough). The coil seems to be big enough to stand more than 4 Amps...
I too have have given some thought to modernizing my TK35. Please post back if you find a solution that involves a DTP copper MCPCB in XP size. The XP-L2 combined with another stacked resistor(and apparently a replacement diode?) could be pretty awesome!