New Utilitech 4xAAA Light at Lowe's USA, Go get one.

Yes, it’s an XP-G2. After I ripped off the dome accidentally, I figured it out…

OL, that’s pretty cool I gotta say. 8) I’m wondering though, at my hardware store copper pipe is…expensive to say the least and I’d have to buy a foot of it at minimum, the disk also presents problems for me. How much issue would I have just soldering a copper star onto a 1/2” coupling and slipping that into the pill with silver paste? Theoretically I was thinking of a 4x7135 Nanjg to power it…maybe add a chip to it, but this would be a NiMH-powered light so I’d keep driving modest.

Darn! Couldn't find it at my Lowes! Is it in the normal flashlight area (near registers in my store) or in a seasonal display area (I checked most of those too)?

I also went across the street to Home Depot which had the new triple "1000 Lumen" 3D light, 2 DST's, and the 2 pack of 3AAA XB-D (or whatever they are) lights. I walked out with none of them (yes, I resisted them all).

-Garry

Online it said my local Lowes was OOS on the new lights but they had a display 3/4 full of them by the self-checkouts. In person they’re nice, a decent bit of heft to them and even through the packaging the lens and reflector look flawless, even if they’re plastic.

Unrelated they had a Cobalt-brand 3xCR123 light for $60…with a very off-center emitter. :stuck_out_tongue:

Although this light is by no means the best out there, you can certainly do ALOT worse for the price. For just a little more than many garbage, 9 LED lights with an awful tint and low output, you can actually get a fairly solid light with one of the latest Cree emitters available. I should also note that some of the other lights they had available from Utilitech were multiple emitter lights that costed the same or more than this one, yet had less than half the output!

4x7135, you could just use the copper star by itself. Get a 1/2" copper pipe cap and use it. Instant disc and pipe together. All you need is a socket or something that fits the id of the cap, so you can whack it on a solid surface, to flatten the end of the cap, (they are domed) and then a little sandpaper to smooth it. Then solder the star to the cap.

I found them down by the nuts and bolts aisle.

When I went, they were over in the seasonal items. So they can literally be anywhere. It may take some time to find them.

I found it in front of the bathrooms near the registers, up front. They had TONS of cardboard display racks with random tools/lights/whatnot strewn throughout the front 1/3 of the store.

I’m not a big fan of the pill threads. I’m sure there’s a benefit, but one I’m not aware of. It can be threaded from the top or through the bottom, it never tightens up until it meets up with the reflector.

Beats out my 3xAAA L2i by a small margin (weak module).
25% more spill, slightly tighter hotspot.

A littler warmer tint than my 3C C8.

OOOh, didn’t think of a cap! Thanks OL! :bigsmile: Maybe go with a 6x7135 then if that will give a bit more thermal path than just the star.

[And sorry, but just to be clear, 20mm star, right?)

Mod finished, see the bottom of this post https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/22288#comment-486641

double the lux reading at 1 meter.Laughing

Well, the stock star is a little smaller than a 20mm, but bigger than a 16mm. I think either file down the edges of the star to fit (don’t like that), or file down the top of the aluminum pill, to compensate for the additional height the 20mm star would create if it sat on top of the aluminum. That should be the thickness of the star to remove off the top of the Aluminum pill.

Fantastic effort OL. love your work. Same with the driver mod in the other thread.

I brought it home and it’s pretty bright already, I think 1400mA through the factory star is going to do it just fine for this. [of course with the addition of the copper plug] Any more juice and it’s competing with the XM-L’s and will really chew through cells, but on a 4x1635 I should theoretically see a little over an hour with four fully charged Eneloop AAA’s. Was kinda fun pulling all the contacts out and copper-braiding everything.

Also, I have a few King Kongs here on the bench…and dang, the tube is just slightly too small for one of them. Shorten/remove the driver spring and you could very likely fit a 26650 inside this thing, you’d just need to find a way to hone the inside of the tube a slight.

Is there enough aluminum in the wall to hone it out? Or would it end up too thin?

-Garry

Still looking at Lowe’s…

I’m a using laptop pulled 18500- 1700mA from here; Toshiba battery yields 18500 cells in my older Utilitech 200 DFL-7048. Light is much brighter over 3-AAA cheap primaries!

I have a large assortment of O-rings so wonder if the 18500 would have the voltage to drive the 0494831 Utilitech 300 properly?

!!

I was in a different Lowes this past Sunday and didn't find this light in that store either! Patiently waiting.

-Garry

Illuminaria, a LiCoO2 is a LiCoO2, a 18500 makes the same voltage as a 18650 as a 26650. I’m pretty sure that with a little tweaking a 18650 will fit. However the Utilitech 300Lm uses a pair of opposed diodes in the contact board to drop 4.8/6v down to 3.5 for the emitter, kind of like how 3v RCR123’s work. If you run a li-ion you’ll need to remove the diodes or replace the contact board altogether. But it’s a 20mm and Intl-Outdoors sells 20mm contact boards (I have a pair en-route plus a 4x7135 Nanjg.

Gerry, looking at it, the body would probably be okay even under the flat spot for the logo, the issue would probably be the threads, but then it would only be an issue of lateral resistance and making sure that one honed evenly. If one can hone evenly then it can work but there’s little room for error or crookedness.
And have you looked for independent displays? At my Lowes these weren’t with the rest of the flashlights, they were in a cardboard stand by the self-checkout machines.

They were all gone from my Lowe’s when I went this week. The display was in the tool section and it’s gone from the store, so they must have sold out fast.

30 of them hidden back by the bathroom fixtures! Employees had not a clue…

@ TheGloriousTachikoma: I found two 2RO, 2-Ohm resister in parallel for 1-Ohm. I was expecting a reverse protecting diode with .7v drop?

Anyway, with the 4aaa I saw 1.2A at the board. Bypassing the resisters and using the 18500 got me 2 Amps(!), .8 Amp with resisters.

You guys think the tail cap and led will hold up? I have a loose pill(?) and no thermal compound found.

BTW, Old Lumens, nice mod!

Thanks