Just got my first B158B ever in the mail today and I hastily slopped it together with a Osram Black Flat S shorting out (intentionally) and therefor DD through the stock driver and a few bypasses. 319kcd! Not bad for 10minutes of modding.
The light I got from AE and it is a super clean and high quality host. Ano is beautiful with no markings and threads are smooooth. Everything is beefy and the lens was immaculate. Nicely packaged with egg crate foam padding in a sturdy but plain box.
When I get more time I’ll black out the internals, use a proper centering ring, adjust the pill so that 100% zoom is at the end of the travel, and start planning how I’m going to get a DIY collar in there. Pics will follow
I got an order from Kaidomain. An S2 host, some 2700k SST-20s, and various centering rings. They screwed up and sent me a bag of 5050 centering rings in place of 3030…
I know I am late to the party, but I finally found some time to plan a few thrower builds. Simon was kind enough to send me:
KW CSLNM1.TG 6N-ebxD46-15 6000-6500K
From payment to delivery in my mailbox, it only took 11 days. What others say about Simon’s Convoy store is 100% true, couldn’t be more happy.
Now all I need is a decent driver for this build.
Novatac Spa with Steel Bezel, unlocked and fully programmable. LED is a very nice SSC P4, 94 lumens max, 0.08 lumens minimum. Tactical momentary enabled.
thank you
I would like to change the LED, but have never tried to open a Novatac, so Im waiting for a moment of inspiration.
Ive had some failures to open a couple of other lights recently, an Eagletac D25a Ti, and a Nitecore Sens Mini. The mini is destroyed. The ET still works, but still has the ugly low CRI LED…
Do you have a suggestion how to defeat Novatac glue, do you use heat?
I had another Novatac w black bezel, that after modding gives 250 lumens. I was quite happy with that. The light now belongs to one of my adult children. So I glad to have found another.
I believe you have the D25a Ti version with the brass pill inside. These lights have a simple construction consisting of a brass pill with threads on both sides for both the bezel and the battery tube.
Eagletac used threadlocker to fasten the pill to the Titanium bezel. I believe they did this to reduce the chance of the bezel accidentally unscrewing when trying to remove the battery tube.
On mine, I was able to remove the bezel from the pill for an LED swap with a bit of muscle-power. I wrapped grey 3M safety walk tape around the bezel for grip and to protect it and did the same with the brass threads. That wasn’t quite enough so I ended up using pliers on top of the tape on the threads. Then just unscrew. It came off with a bit of work, but no heat was needed. The brass threads where the battery tube screws in got a little beat up from the pliers, but they still work completely fine and the exterior of the light was not damaged.
Incidentally, the earlier model of D25 Ti is easier to mod. It has no pill and no glue. However, it also has less smooth action when unscrewing the bezel due to Ti on Ti. And more importantly, the driver is not as good as the later model D25a Ti. It loses access to intermediate modes when run on 14500.
Just in the last week I modded both versions of D25a Ti
Later version D25a Ti with brass pill - I swapped out an XPL HI for an SST-20 95 CRI. Unfortunately, this didn’t work out as the SST-20 I used seemed to have output issues. The tint, CRI and color temp was great, but I probably wasn’t even getting 100 lumens even on 14500. I think the SST-20 in question might have been damaged. I ended up swapping the XPL-HI back in.
Earlier version D25a Ti with no pill - I replaced the stock driver with a FET driver I had laying around from Mountain Electronics (Guppydrv rev 1 firmware). I also replaced the LED with a 4000K LH351D high CRI on copper Noctigon. This greatly improved the output, tint and CRI and it now works fully on 14500.
So far I have opened 4 Novatacs with black bezel, it’s not hard at all.
Just push the bezel into something rubbery (floor mat, sandals, shoes, car’s tyre) and twist it counter clockwise to unscrew the bezel.
The challenge will be removing the old LED which was glued into the host and building a base for placing your triple MCPCB.
Ok, I’ve come to the realization that I suck at taking beam shots but here they are anyway lol.
Ti Beta 219ac 4k Eneloop Pro
Delta 219C 5K Keep power 18350
Alpha MCE 4500k Efest 18350
Not sure why the Beta looks blue and the Alpha looks green in the pics. In person the Beta is very warm and the Alpha is more neutral. The MCE is much more floodier that I thought it would be but still a perfect profile. Just the right amount of hotspot and spill around it.
