i just bought 2 of the last ones at my local store at the $ 6.16 price.
I put an XM-L2 T6 on copper, replaced that honkin big steel spring with a shorter gold plated on and filled the gap with a copper rod. Stacked a resistor for a bit of power, hopefully. It’s pulling 2.97A at the tail with a nice white light. 
O Canada!
Aluminum Reflector!?
I just assumed it was plastic because someone said it was. It looks like aluminum encased in a fiberglass shell on the outside. If you look at the back bottom, you should be able to see the bare aluminum. That explains why it doesn't melt against my MTG2.
Someone please confirm.
EDIT: By someone, I mean someone way back when this light first came out. It's fairly thin aluminum, but combined with the fiberglass it seems strong enough to be durable. I'm pretty good a damaging reflectors. This is one that I have not hurt yet.
EDIT: Ok, it's plastic. I just bored out the emitter hole and it's plastic. The metalized finish that is under the fiberglass shell was throwing me off.
Holy cow! This thread took off when I stepped away. Looks like I'm gonna have to get one to do a giveaway now that the thread reached 1,000 posts (sorry I couldn't be #1,000 - let me go delete a bunch of posts earlier in this thread :) ). I'm gonna do a twist on the giveaway though!
-Garry
The whole reflector is plastic. No aluminium at all. I have had no issues with the 3 defiants I have modified with plastic reflectors and they have all got extremely hot at one point or another.
Well I didn’t have time to head to the other one in town here that lists having stock but tomorrow I will take that (30minute) drive to the other end of town and see what they have. At $6.16 a pop I will take whatever I can grab cause these will make perfect gifts for people you don’t want to have Li-ion batteries and their quarks….
We have been waiting for this ever since post 600!
Garrybunk, did you also notice that you’re at the very auspicious 3999 posts?
You're right DNF. I just bored out the emitter hole to fit the whole MTG2 pcb. It's plastic. The metalized finish that is under the fiberglass shell was throwing me off.
I just came back to say that this giveaway could also coincide with my 4,000th post! (Actually I knew I was close to 4,000 and came back to check where I was. ) Kill two birds with one stone! 
-Garry
I still need to find 2 more of these to build a project i started…
What? I was hoping the 1,000 post was the winner! :bigsmile:
Sorry, and I'm pretty sure you won't qualify for the giveaway either.
-Garry
I got the chance to play around with 2 of these last night. The one I modified by putting an XM-L2 T6 on copper and stacking a resistor on the “driver” board, changed the wiring to 22ga Silicone, as well as the stock one with XM-L U2 I gave my brother for his birthday today.
The stock U2 version is of course a bluer light, plainly visible difference with these 2 lights side by side. They easily throw out at the 300 yd range, not very defined much beyond that but there is light hitting further.
After having modes for so long, a single on/off is a bit difficult to take! lol My son (6) was out with me and my brother and it was a dark moonless night, he didn’t like the light being turned completely off , leaving him in an apparent complete darkness. (The light is plenty bright enough to make your eyes feel like the night is pitch black when you turn it off!)
I didn’t get an Amp reading before I modified my light, I know I know I suck at this, but after I got mine back together it’s pulling something like 2.79A, also forgot to write it down so I need to take it again. lol But that puts it up there around the 1000 lumen mark on an XM-L2 so it’s definitely a bright light, and now with a whiter tint as well.
After coming in I took it apart again and totally disassembled the switch. Some of the lowest, cheapest construction in a light since my son got free gimme lights at a communication convention (those super cheap 3 AAA 7 led throwaway lights are built much like this one) The switch is a thin aluminum stamped sheet, broken in the switch body for the connection point. Fugly! Will absolutely have to replace that, get some resistance gone right there for sure! A quick bypass in the Mag style tail spring and it should be well up in the 3A range without even sticking a stacked 105 in for modes. Should be fairly easy to get up into the 4A range for some better downrange throw, have some QLites on the way with 1 not spoken for, will have to see how that goes.
The driver mount area is larger than the standard 17mm QLite driver, so I think I’ll just flatten a piece of 3/4” water pipe and make a plate to solder the driver to, then press fit it into the pill. Should be fairly straight forward. The pill itself is quite large, even if the shelf under the emitter is the standard 1/8” thickness. Why couldn’t they leave that an easy 1/4” thick? 1/2”? Plenty of space for it to be 3/4” thick, but they cut a deep hole instead, can’t figure that one out. Not like it matters, it sits recessed into a massive finned heat-sink, not like it could possibly make enough heat in stock form to even come close to filling all that aluminum with heat! I might cut a 1/4” thick copper plug to stick in under the emitter, just to get the heat superhighway flowing towards those fins. 2 of em?
I wonder how the light would look with the black paint stripped and the entire light anodized? Polished first? Red heat sink, orange body and head? lol, those are the dye colors I have at the moment. 
Should be fun modding this one further, looks like it might turn into an impressive chunk of light…perhaps with time enough to play with it a bit before I hit my next post mark…
There is a simple and cheap way to convert to 2 - 18650’s in this forum topic.
You will get more run time a brighter still.
No luck at the other HD that listed having stock. Yesterday they showed 19 in stock, this morning it showed 5 of which I and 2 associates found 0. Oh well…… hopefully with LED’s coming down in price more places like HD will have more models like this go on clearance. I would have loved to have grabbed a couple. :_(
Looks amazing! I just tested mine with the single resistor stacked on the factor driver board and got 3.3A on an 26650, direct drive. And the battery tube is like 1/64” smaller than my cell, so close it’s difficult to measure actually. Wouldn’t be difficult to get it to fit, maybe just stripping the black would do that.
Great idea on the cutting of the tube. I’m sure there’s all kinds of ways to do it, that one looks neat and was comparatively simple. Thanks for sharing!
I agree with you DBC, that switch area sucks. I put a Judco switch in mine and direct wired to the emitter. Like I said earlier, I would like to run a cell through that switch body for more capacity.
EDIT: 3/4" aluminum bar presses in to the pill nicely. Drill a hole through that and press in a 3/8" copper rod and you're ready to cook with fire. It seems to have no issue keeping my MTG2 cool. I finally dedomed my MTG2 and only got 94kcd in the DST at 6 amps. Has anyone dedomed an xml2 and drivin it at 6+ amps in the DST yet? It would be nice to know what it measures.