I bought some cheap C8s awhile back and want to beef them up a little. Only identifying mark on the driver is ‘169C’. Here is a pic of the driver. Can someone tell me what type of driver this is and if/how it is mod friendly?
Looks to be a hollow pill, so if you’re beefing it up you’ll need to fill some of that space so the star is in contact with more mass. Whether copper or aluminum this will go a long way toward making your light more useful. Then I think I’d just replace the driver with a known driver like the 105c Qlite. Drop off the blinkies and get 4 levels of brightness in nice even spacing.
That begs the question…what to fill the pill with? Is there a thermally conductive synthetic/epoxy that can be used?
Aluminum is probably the easiest and cheapest. Not a big deal if you’ve done that kind of thing before, a neat project if you haven’t.
You could, probably easiest, stack copper discs inside and once you figure out how tall you can get away with, solder them together when press fit like O-L does.
I’d be prone to make a copper plug as thick as possible from one piece, but then, I like the challenge. 
As in an aluminum rod/bar? Cut and press-fit inside the pill that backs up the star?
Just like that.
It’s really only going to be a disc, you’ll still have to allow room for the driver and it’s components. But that would allow the star to radiate heat into SOMETHING which would then radiate it out through the pill into the head.
Even if you only used a copper star to press into that hole, then a copper star with an emitter on top of that, you’d be a lot better off. I have several cheap copper stars that don’t have a direct thermal path, worthless as a mount for an emitter but handy for an extension of copper. Want a few? Bought em off ebay on the cheap with the hopes someone got it right…they didn’t.
I think I have 4 I’m not using, yours if you want em.
You wouldn’t even have to remove the mask, just flip it over and let the masked side face the driver. All you’d have to do is size it to fit in the hollow core of the pill. The tighter the better.
Yessir…I’ll take them…thanks! Can I send you a SASE for mailing?
Just shoot me a PM and tell me where to send em.
PM sent…thanks!