Got mine today from this special sale. So far, looks the same as the original F3-L2 from the farfarled guy, which is good - good quality overall. I'll be ripping it down. Nowadays only one mod option - FET based OSHPark driver, preferably wight's FET+1*7135 .
Looks like that deal w/shipping is over. For US, it will currently cost bout $8.50 ($5.85+shipping) which is still a very good deal for this quality.
Agree, fellow Long Islander, Great quality for the price. Fantastic all-purpose lights. Nice build quality and I love the beautiful flood with the ability to zoom. It’s an EZ-PZ light you just click on and will serve any practical purposes wonderfully.
My original F3-L2 has a nice 4D tint XM-L2 in it now, does about 700 lumens. This one does about 510 lumens stock using a good cell. Yes - the flood looks real good, decently wide. The driver does a pretty quick reset to hi mode (~2 secs). The driver appears to be exactly the same as an F13 clone - 22mm wide and same exact parts layout.
What do you need exactly? There are some choices for OSHPark 22mm drivers - I got a couple I've used. Think Richard sells one. What's bad about the F3-L2 is there is no retaining ring, so if you replace the stock driver, you have to be creative on how to securely mount it so you got a good ground (batt -). In the past, I've notched the aluminum lip with a metal chisel so the pill lip bites into the copper ground ring of the driver - that's one method. Another thing I've done is use thin copper strips press-fit in between the driver and lip of the pill. Not sure if the F13 clones have the same issue - think so... Third option I've done is punt about the driver replacement, and just piggyback in a 17mm driver, so you still get the stock driver's press fit feature. Seems almost all stock drivers have those scalloped sections on the driver edge, copper coated, while all our custom drivers do not... It's always a problem that needs solving.
I use one of the ground ring via’s to solder a piece of thin copper wire in, bend it around the outside of the driver board to the the ground ring on the back, solder it in and around, then file the top and botton of the blob to almost ground ring level, and at the side just a bit sticking out. Then press-fit the driver in and you have both the grip and the ground contact. you could do that on two locations on the ground ring if needed. It takes a bit of effort, but then it works really well!
I learned from Djozz and have been doing that — it works really well, quite reliably, where it works at all.
Haven’t tried drilling my own vias where they aren’t available, haven’t built any drivers on boards yet. Might eventually, but not real soon.
No, I was just wondering generally about whether there are any good pre-made 22mm drivers, since several lights could use them.
I poked around and didn’t find anything else to make me scream and leap.
I hope they keep trying to get our attention, though, this was great while it lasted.
Good Morning gentlemen!
Anyone knows how to modify the driver to get rid of all those annoying modes (lo-beams, SOS, strobes) and leave only one “hi-beam” mode?
The driver is on the pic…
You could just hot wire direct from the cell to the LED, then it's only one mode of hi with no extra features like low voltage protection, etc. All you need to do is connect that red wire (LED+) to a contact point that has straight conductivity with the driver spring, then for the blue wire (LED-), wire it to a ground contact point. Use a DMM to find the correct connection pts. What I've done is drill a hole thru the center of the driver, and run the LED+ wire straight to the spring. The ground is on the outer ring of the driver, but usually you can find a pad somewhere on the middle of the board that has continuity with the outer ground ring.
The stock LED sits on a poor performing MCPCB (i.e. star), so you would want to keep the amps to something reasonable, like 3.5A or so, or less. Don't bypass wire the spring and use a weaker performing cell instead of higher performing ones. If you use a good copper MCPCB like a Noctigon or SinkPAD, then it's safe to go with max amps, like I do, with a good performing cell (30Q, HG2, HE2, HE4, 25R, EFEST 35A, etc.).
This is the 22 mm driver I used:
Sorry, don't seem to have a pic of the pill fully assembled....