Hi all,
Ever wished your TCR10 could tail stand, had a clicky switch and magnetic? Now you can!!
Recently I picked up a Jetbeam TCR10 as a birthday gift for myself :bigsmile:
I’ve always like the design of the TCR10, but was against getting it in the past as I felt it was not practical, it could not tail stand, had no switch and had parasitic drain, also, reading around, this light is very difficult to open and mod and prone to failure due to frail driver wires
So after studying the light at the shop, I decided to pick it up and see what I could do to solve the problem
I wanted to achieve the following:
- Ability to tail stand
- Mechanical clicky switch
- LED swap to a high CRI Led
So the first step was to get the tail spike out, I read somewhere (forgot which thread or forum) that a member used a allen key to force open the tailcap, so I tried it and it came off quite easily (doesn’t look like any hint of thread lock being applied)
The light becomes sort of a hollow tube, the battery still remains in, held by a slight ridge at the end of the tube, but the light isn’t going to be any good if it can’t switch on :bigsmile:
So I tried various parts from my pile of lights, cheapie china zoom lights tails, spare switches, filed down separator boards, until I tried one thing
The CQG bullet… the tail… fits… just barely
I could not believe my luck, the whole thing just fits in
Of course, the threads do not match, and the tail is about a hair thinner, so I wrapped copper tape a few rounds around the tail and slowly screwed the tail in (copper is a soft metal, and will deform to fit both the small and large threads, and copper conducts electricity too)
What do you know? Its quite a snug fit, and I now have the ability to toggle the light on and off, mechanically!!
The light takes a split second to switch on from any ring setting, probably the designers did not intend of it to be switched on this way, but now it behaves like the nitecore SRT5, I can pre-select my light before switching it on
Oh, and the red and blue can be toggled by doing a half press :bigsmile:
Due to my CQG bullet being modded to include a neodymium magnet in its tail cap, the TCR10 now inherits the ability to hang upside down from any metal surface :bigsmile: (not horizontal though, too heavy)
The next step of course, was to swap out the LED with a nice LED… The first challenge is to get the bezel to open, which, like what others have said, is a PITA to get it open
The head actually consists of 4 parts i think, the bezel, the fins, the magnetic ring and the bottom
To avoid snapping the wire, I used my pilers to grip the fins (NOT the flat bottom with the jetbeam logo on it, you may also turn that portion as well and it snap the wires through the holes in it)
For the bezel, I simply used a master wrench and turned it, HARD
And behold…
I don’t know what alloy of titanium jetbeam used, but it hardly got scratched, even with tools on bare metal (my tape method didn’t work, not enough grip)
One advantage of titanium or steel over anodized aluminium is that any scratches or dents caused by the tools can be sanded or polished away, and if any marks remain it usually isn’t really noticeable
I thought of putting in my favourite LED, the osram oslon square 4000k 92 cri, but since I already have so many lights using that LED, I thought of trying a nichia, I had a spare 219B (i busted my 219c accidentally) and decided, why not?
Removing the existing aluminium half star reveals the cool white XML2, I filed a notigon XPG star to roughly the same shape so that it will fit
After confirming it fits, I reflowed the LED on to the board, and put a small copper coin underneath to elevate the board slightly higher so that the LED is better positioned in the reflector
I actually have plans for that tiny 3mm red/blue LED, I plan to swap it for a 3mm UV and 3mm high cri white, placed at opposite ends on the green board, I will have to drill a similar hole into the solid reflector to accomodate the new LED, the result will be a more useful UV light, and super low drain white light (firefly?), but that would be a mod for another time
So I put everything back and switched it on, everything works, however, somehow, perhaps due to the new nichia LED being of a different resistance or something, my “off” setting now became moonlight mode, so now I have 4 modes, high, medium, low and moonlight
However, it remains at moonlight, even when in red/blue mode, so it now red/blue becomes sort of useless, I could migitate the problem by using a neutral XML2 instead, but I will stick with my new moonlight mode for now
Next to the CGQ bullet
Joining the titanium high cri family
Triple osram, single FET osram and now rotary nichia 219b!
Thanks for reading!!
