Rechargeable Maglite worth upgrading?

I am new to the flashlite mod/collecting world. I have nothing but simple over the counter stuff and a 4sevens mini so please excuse my ignorance.

I have a couple Maglite rechargeable flashlights that I carried on duty as a police officer. When our department refitted the cars with MDT’s they eliminated the Maglite chargers and offered the flashlites to those who wanted them. The majority of the guys were already carrying the early Streamlights and I ave an old Scorpion I bought and carried for years. But I always had the Maglite handy and unless I was clearing a house or in an otherwise tactical type situation the Maglite was a constant companion. I have a sort of sentimental attachment to these lights. So now on to my question.

Is this flashlight a workable platform to be updated? It doesn’t have to be rechargeable with the original chargers, any modern battery systems would be preferred. Same with the internals. Anything goes, just want to keep one of the lights outside appearance as stock as possible and the other I thought maybe could be dolled up a bit. I’d prefer a simple single mode or maybe 3 mode high medium low setup would work. The main thing I want is functional and reliable.

My skills and tools are limited. I can do some electrical work and have a decent set of regular garage tools (sanders, grinders, drill press….) Second question is this something that a novice can attack or should I employ a modder’s assistance?

I have stalked on the forum awhile and often find myself frustrated by the lack of knowledge I have and my inability to keep up. Im working on it and am blown away with the information here. Thanks in advance for any help.

-Troop

Welcome! :slight_smile:

Soldering skills and a decent soldering iron are a prerequisite. That you have a drill press puts you ahead of many here, but a dremel will be much more useful than a grinder.

As to the platform, I’ve never seen one, but of the battery is removable then the sky is the limit. If the head is built like most other maglites you could simply put a drop-in in the head and call it a day, or you could stack NiMH cells in the tube, or even go for some kind of li-ion power.

If you want to cut your teeth on modding, buy a simple host , emitter, and driver , and assemble it yourself. It’s lots of fun and will at the least get you hooked on what the rest of us are addicted to. :party:

Thanks Tachikoma,

I guess my next task is to figure out what I have and what will fit.
I have a p60 clone ordered (over 8 weeks now from DX?) that I thought I would play with to learn a bit on drivers and emitters.
Another newbie question, is there a reliable US supplier to buy from. I HATE waiting weeks and or months for a part to arrive. I am too ADD to not have a project moving. When they stall I start to lose interest. 8)

Well there’s your first mistake :smiley: . DX’s shipping times are like playing roulette. Alot of the other suppliers ship much faster, such as intl-outdoors or cnqualitygoods. (and at least in my experience, Fasttech, though they’ve fallen otut of favor) There’s a section of the site here that has reviews of the different retailers. Insofar as American suppliers go the only ones I can think of are illumination supply out of CA and Lighthound in TX.

A P60 host is perhaps not the best way to learn about these things as the inherent design of the P60 will cause anything spicier than an amp and a half to cook itself to death.

HA! and my second mistake was the P60 host! Little good my reading has done. I thought it would be good as the parts seemed to be readily available and most combos have been debugged a bit.

-Troop

I wouldn’t call it a mistake. Anyone entering the light hobby who previously really only saw Surefire as cutting edge (like me :smiley: ) would see P60 hosts as a good idea, but the potential interchangeability isn’t really all that useful. Plus, the driver pockets on the little pills can only really hold a 4x7135 style driver, there’s no room for a boost driver or anything terribly fun. (not knocking the (X)x7135 drivers though). I mean, I have a P60 host (technically two if you count the M951 on my AR) and I’m in no rush to get rid of it. :slight_smile:

Do a little research into building a C8. Plenty to learn there, picking a driver and emitter and installing them yourself. Lots to learn about LED temperature and different drivers. And when you’re done you have a nice versatile torch.

[EDIT] And I’m sorry, we got off-track a little form your OP. Why not post a pic or two of the light in question as well as the model? And again, if you can remove the batter then it could well be worth upgrading. An old, proprietary rechargeable battery will be difficult to work with, especially if it can’t be removed. But if it’s still in good shape you could work with it, it all depends.

The Magcharger is not an easy light to mod. I would not recommend it for modding. A regular Maglite 2D is much easier, but a charger has so many more components and it's a pain to work on. If I were you, I would try to sell off the Magchargers on ebay and then buy a light that was easy to work on, such as a P60 light or a C8 light.

There's a lot of P60 style lights around and Solarforce are good ones to start with. You can get a bare host for cheap and pick a drop in ready to go, or buy a light already ready to go. Then once you have it, you can begin to learn about how they work and start getting ideas about how to mod one.

The C8 style light is inexpensive and it can be modded with a different led and driver, so it's also one to start with simply because if you ruin it, you don't loose a lot of money on it.

Going to the modding forum here should help too. There's stickys with modding links there and just using the search function will get plenty of results. Search for P60 drop in, or C8 and start reading.

You don't need a lot of tools to start. A good soldering iron in the 35-45 watt class, with interchangeable tips is necessary. You can use 60/40 rosin core solder from Radio Shack and get some tip cleaner while you are there. If you can find some scrap bits of Copper or Brass from someone, you can practice on soldering on that stuff. Flux is a must and you can get rosin flux from RC too. Clean first, then Flux, then Solder, is the best procedure.

Malkoff Mag Charger Drop-in

http://www.malkoffdevices.com/drop-in-mod/dropin-for-maglite-streamlight/malkoff-magcharger-dropin/malkoff-magcharger-dropin

They are a bit pricey, but I think they are the best option for folks who are looking to upgrade a Mag with sentimental value and don’t have a lot of modifying experience.

Well, when you consider that a decent Mag mod probably requires a custom milled heatsink anyway, the price of the Malkoff ain’t so bad.

I beg to differ with their assessment of ‘nice white’. 4500k is yellow, not white. :expressionless:

Uh, is that your assessment of 4500K in general or the Malkoff in particular?

The page you linked said ‘nice white, 4500k, and 4500k is edging into incan territory, just sayin’ 0:)

Well, incans top out at about 3500K, at least that’s how they look to me when I compare my lights side by side. My two most used lights are a P60 Xenon and a 4500K Nichia, and there is no confusing the two.

Most 4500K emitters that I’ve seen look “creamy”. I wouldn’t call them white, but I wouldn’t call them yellow either.

Jayrob makes an outstanding XM-L2 Maglite build. He converted my MagCharger to a 1000 lumen monster! Battery life/runtime is a bit short with the 6 volt stock battery pack, but about 4 hours on high with 3xD NiMh batteries… Will even run on 3 alkaline D cells in a pinch. With a few simple mods, the stock charger will properly charge a 3.6v stack.

Search for Jayrob here, or on Laserpointer forums.

-Dan

I love my Mag Charger and only upgrade was to the NiMh battery and a 20 watt bulb. Only had to drill the reflector a bit but much brighter and throws farther now.

TerraLUX MiniStar 31 is another option.

Drops right into the MagCharger, no modding required.
Has a switch on the side to change from 1 to 3 modes.
“Bright” is a relative term but it puts out a lot of light, much more than the original bulb and more than a single XP-G Malkoff. Less throw but more lumens. Typical triple emitter, TIR beam, just a big hot spot.
Good run time, especially if you use it as a three mode.
Very good stateside retailer.

TerraLUX products don’t seem to get much love around here. I think that’s mainly due to optimistic Lumen ratings and relatively high prices. I have quite a few of their products, all purchased before I started really modifying lights but they’ve all held up very well.

6 of my 7 full size (D) have these drop-ins, the oldest is a 5D with the earlier TLE-300 single mode. They all still work fine.

I gave three of my State Trooper friends TLE-300s for their MagChargers, that was over two years ago and all three are still working.

In the world of easy to install drop-ins for the MagCharger there’s Malkoff and TerraLux, IMHO both are very good. It comes down to which one you prefer. If you’re looking for throw, go with the Malkoff, flood TerraLux.

And if you still have the original NiCad battery replace it with one of these.

Bullshit!

A copper MCPCB, and a copper spacer ring in place of the dinky ground spring, and they're perfectly fine up to 4 amps or more.

Thanks all for your comments and input.
I recieved a very informative pm that helped put it all in perspective for me.
I appreciate you all.

I got lots of learn’n to do.

I am gonna just do some simple improvements, bulb and batteries to my favorite of the two I have. The second one I think I am gonna sell. Is eBay the best route? I freaking hate Ebay!

-Troop

for sheer exposure, it probably is. You could list it here and on craigslist, they might help too.

Thanks Tachikoma.