lol yeah its a fair distance…. only soldering iv done is the banana plugs on my cinema system! im happy to have a play at it though as its useless as it is…. the only solder joints i see are to the emmiter… iv studied the thing and i cant see a way of getting the driver and emmiter out of the head without doing any damage?? the torch is actually at my girlfriends at the minute so cant have a go till the weekend…. the problem is def in the head though as i tried a piece of cable from the tail to the battery negative and it was still as dim. so should i try heat up the two solder joints to the emmiter first and see if that has any result??
Possibly, from what I saw today, the contact points are tiny though so take care. If the pill is aluminum, I’d be more suspect of the solder joints (assuming there are some) between the negative (0v) ring on the driver and the pill. I don’t think I have ever soldered to aluminum, but I believe it can be a ball ache, don’t ask me why, I don’t actually know, its on my list of things to try…
My c8 just has the driver pressed into the pill, no soldering, but since it works, I’ve not played yet. On the new brass pill, it soldered pretty easily. Just make sure the iron is hot, I usually tin the iron then flick the excess off, (or use a damp scotch pad to wipe it clean) then tin each part before fitting and only add solder if it really necessary. The ke-5 “looks” like a posh c8, if it is, the head SHOULD (hopefully someone can confirm this) screw off the body and the driver/led should be on a screw in pill, accessed from the front of the head. But I don’t know this for sure, so hunt the reviews and see if there are any tear down pictures. If there is a removable pill, it’ll give much easier access to both the driver and led star.
Edit:- just looking at your pictures the driver does appear to be pressed into a piece of brass, no soldering and the fit does not look brilliant, does the battery tube seat straight onto the outer ring of the driver? Or does it rely on the threads making contact with the head and the driver outer ring making contact with the head? If so, looking at the driver picture, the contact does not look brilliant, not for handling 3+a anyway. That maybe your issue.