I ordered this golden 14500 light for 6.5$ from aliexpress. It’s number 7 on the flashlight reference
It arrived today with free tracked chinapost shipping in a small box full of foam.
I took some quick pictures and measurements:
It’s bigger than I thought, 103mm length, head is 22mm wide and tail 20mm. 3mm thick tubewall.
Pill is hollow, it’s just a aluminium ring which sits inside the head. Reflector is a very cheap plastic reflector and the lens is also cheap plastic. No dust or scratches. Lockout not possible.
Modes 100,50 and strobe. Current is about 1.2A(depending on voltage)
I will disassemble and try to mod it in the next days.
Edit:
Just disassembled it.
Picture of the driver. A switch, a DX jack, some sensing resistors, one capacitor and a small driver chip. The driver is huge over 19mm wide. A lot of room so I thought of using a 15mm driver board on top but I was too lazy.
Stock current was 1A@4V. I had problems shorting the sensing resistors(or moving the led+ direct to bat+), the light started to blink in high mode. Maybe this is some thermal protection or so, I also get this now if I use my Efest IMR…
Anyway I soldered two r100 on top of the existing resistors which is also out of regulation but works reliable with normal batteries. Afterwards current was around 2.5A@4V.I also removed the DC jack and glued the piece of rubber inside the hole, I will cut and plastidip it tomorrow. I accidentally removed the cap, that made the light one mode(click on, click off), not bad but I added a cap again.
I put in a xpg2 on a noctigon. I used a bit of arctic silver on the outer edge and pressed the noctigon in the aluminium “pill” with a vise. The hollow underside looked so sad, but I found a scrap piece of aluminium round which fitted inside. I used plenty of the cheap thermal paste and a drop of CA to fix it.
The tailcap spring had high resistance, I cleaned the tube and soldered a piece of wire over the spring. The positive spring had to go, instead I used a piece of solid copper wire. The spring in the tail is huge so that’s no problem.
I also exchanged the lens, 20mm with AR coating.
I like the light now way better, the beam profile is smooth and bright. I doubled the brightness, which is a bit sad if I consider that I now have a xpg2 and more than twice the current, but anyway I like the light a lot more now.
That’s great news. Its on my list to buy.
)