The sun rises in my livingroom.

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
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The mailman dropped by today with the usual taped up box from China. Inside was the 2 x 100 watt HID system. I was surprised to find a very high quality professional build that included a wiring harness and relay. All connectors are standard automotive diagnostic type (idiot proof for connection & polarity). All exposed wiring on the harness is contained inside a thick plastic sleeve to protect it from moisture penetration and under-hood engine heat. The bulbs are mounted on ceramic insulators to tolerate the heat from the 100 watt HID's.

At turn-on, they came to life immediately after applying power and reached full luminescence after about 15 seconds. The ballasts took about 25 minutes before they became nearly to hot to handle. The heat coming off the bulbs felt similar to warming my hands above an electric heater. I ran the system for 1 contiguous hour during an initial trial burn-in. More testing to follow before I begin the searchlight mod. I want to make sure I can return it to the supplier should a failure occur before cutting any wires.

As you can imagine, these things are bright. A guess would be roughly the equivalent of around +5000 watts of incandescent light. A friend has a photo studio where I played around with his lighting arrays, so I would guess that comparison to be in the ball park. My whole dining area was light up like the sun. Far to bright to be in the area without dark polarized sunglasses. Its so bright that all the adjacent rooms leading through open doorways were also brightly light... amazing!

THANK YOU 2100 for your excellent suggestions!! I wonder what the ceiling bounce test would net on your light meter?

The camera has a hard time capturing actual luminescence and doesnt come close to showing the actual brightness. It makes 35 watt HID's look dim by comparison.

I'll try to get beamshots before and after the searchlight mod.

This 100 watt halogen spotlight will receive the 100 watt HID conversion shortly.

Edit: Battery performance run time added:

Battery: PC680 ODYSSEY Drycell Lead Acid Absorbed Glass Mat

17 amp hour rating

Battery age: 7 years

2 x 100W Test

Resting Voltage: 12.93V

Run time in minutes to 11.0V (loaded): 21 min., 11 sec.

Resting Voltage after 5 minutes recovery: 11.97V

1 x 100W Test

Resting Voltage: 12.91V

Run time in minutes to 11.0V (loaded): 55 min., 50 sec.

Resting Voltage after 5 minutes recovery: 11.76V

I will try to barrow a friends clamp meter to get amperage readings later...

2

I have a similar setup but 55w and slightly smaller spotlight. Where did you get the bulbs and spotlight?

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I just noticed something really weird I have that same wooden jewelry box on your table and that is were I store my flashlight parts.

4

Im looking forward to seeing this mod come to life

5

I assume that you have a 55 watt halogen that you're thinking about converting?

I got the 100W HID kit here. Great communication with the reseller and the items arrived in perfect condition. Total with shipping was about $98 to the US.

Credit goes to 2100 for finding these for me.

6

I really like mine. Is yours bamboo? I got it at an estate sale for $5 and keep all my GPS equipment in it.

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Already converted. I'll post it up soon. Posted it on cpf awhile back. Would rather have it up here though since I don't really go on cpf anymore. It's not very pretty. But works great.

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I am not sure if it bamboo or not and I don't remember were it came from I have had it for at least 20 years. It was just really weird when I noticed it I have never seen another one like it before.

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Haha! I NEVER post my creations or significant contributions to CPF. Its a total waste of time and like giving information to an ignorant glutinous enemy.

Please do post your HID conversion. Just copy/paste from CPF if you dont have much time. 55W is a lot brighter than 35W. Do you still have a spare ballast and bulb?

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I might have some spares. I just have to check. I have been putting them in offroad lights and on the brights of one of my cars. Started with them in the original headlight housings of my jeep but took them out soon after cause I was afraid of the glare for other drivers. I get most of them from ddm tuning. 55w start at $45 per kit.

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Im glad to see youre not one of those guys running HID's in regular auto headlight housings any longer. Which offroad housings are you using for conversion?

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I was using hella 700ffs on my jeep, but sold it. Will probably use some cheap ebay housings as soon as I find a nice suzuki sammy to put them on. I really did like the hella's but I feel the ebay's are more in my budget. I also plan on putting some 500ffs behind the grill of my crown vic.

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Battery performance run time added:

Battery: PC680 ODYSSEY Drycell Lead Acid Absorbed Glass Mat

17 amp hour rating

Battery age: 7 years

2 x 100W Test

Resting Voltage: 12.93V

Run time in minutes to 11.0V (loaded): 21 min., 11 sec.

Resting Voltage after 5 minutes recovery: 11.97V

1 x 100W Test

Resting Voltage: 12.91V

Run time in minutes to 11.0V (loaded): 55 min., 50 sec.

Resting Voltage after 5 minutes recovery: 11.76V

I will try to barrow a friends clamp meter to get amperage readings later...

14

I get about 91W on 24V supply (25.0V loaded and 3.65A). 24V juice makes the ballast a little bit more efficient, so they could say be giving out slightly more output than with a 12V supply and yet 12V it is taking say 98W.

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Im using a large descent quality 10A 12V battery charger to keep mine going. Starting amperage requires more than the charger can deliver to ignite 1 bulb... much less 2 bulbs. I have to keep the battery in the circuit to fire the ignitors. Once the operating temperature has stabilized, my battery charger uses 242W at the wall plug to keep both 100W lights running. Im sure the DC charger isnt that efficient and it generates a considerable amount of heat.

I need to barrow a good clamp meter to get actual readings before the ballast and after the ignitor.

16

2100, I put my spotlight together over the weekend. The conversion turned out extremely well and it performs exactly as you had conjectured. The beam through the nice aluminum reflector is quite uniform and the 100W's create some massive spill. Its like having 30 SST-90's for the spill beam but with a multi-thousand foot range hotspot thrown in for good measure ... probably about 1/10th the overall power of the VS3. The beam easily torched the entire 3000 x 40 foot tarmac airstrip I fly out of. All this in the palm of my hand and driven from my cigarette lighter plug. I am honestly blown away. Maybe even a bit pissed off that I didnt build one years ago. I'll write a review soon. Thanks for all of your support bro.

Man, Im still blown away by this darn thing. WOW!

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BTW, be careful with the light. I am not sure how much UV your Coleman front glass cuts, and how much UV the quartz envelope cuts. It's ok to just check out th bulb at over 1m for maybe 1 or 2 seconds, but nothing more than that. But anyway i am wearing transition lenses which cuts out quite a bit of UV-A. (i know how much it cuts with my 405nm laser defocused)

Throw is good and fun, but most times i prefer sheer brute force lumens esp in a small package.

575W (MSR575) 700W(HTI 700W/D4) and 1500w (HTI 1500W/D7) compared to HID car headlamps at high beam (35W x 2?). This thing is small enough to fit into your coat!

165000 lumens for the 1.5kW.

All vids belong to Thomas from Germany. (siamese on CPF)


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BTW the guy is using LiPo for 1.5kW, yes. And we are cringing on 2 x 18650s!

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Not easy to source for the parts. Siamese told me to find on Ebay but i can't find the PAR lights. Aliexpress no go too. I can get a UPS or Inverter to power, but most probably AC to save cost.

There are some decently priced searchlights on aliexpress but are physically very big at least for my house/storeroom to store.