ZY-T08 Review & Modded *pic heavy* 12/03/'14 beamshots added

so today i got my T08 from DX. Paid $31 in the hope it had a aluminium reflector (as it said in the discription of the light) instead of the plastic one on fasttech. Sadly it didnt, it was plastic.

I also got myself a 105C to install into it instead of the stock driver.


the light has a nice finish and had no scratches or dents when it arrived.


i had to put some tin on my batteries to make sure it makes contact with the driver.


the pill is big and has a lot of threads so it can move all the heat to the body of the light.


driver uses a mosfet.


the light comes with a tiny little of thermal compount. but nothing to write home about.
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so lets start modding!


ill use a 2.8A 105C driver with modes HI-MID-LOW selected.
the LED ill use is a XM-L2 U2 A1 i know alot of people dont like that tint but i kinda think its nice.


stacking the driver. there is a nice hole from the + contacts on the stock driver for connecting the new driver, so stripping the old driver was not really needed.
i didn’t do it because i did not have a lot of time but i might do it later for components.


everything is done and fits very nice in to the pill.


FINALY beam shots. sorry for the massive delay, the weather was not all that great and time was short on hand.

when i found some time i copperbraided the springs and stacked some more chips to the driver. Im pulling 3.5A from the batteries.

i dont have any pics of the light being on low(@0.2A), it was not visible on my camera (nexus 4)


mid @1.2A: tons of light, long battery life, … even at medium this light throws 100+meters


high @3.5A: this throws 200+meters with ease.

this is my brightest light at the moment. i cant wait to start building with those magic MTG2 leds :p.

ps: im from belgium and my english isn’t the best so please forgive typo’s

Great job! The ZY-T08 is one of my favorite lights. You may find when you get it together than the LED doesn't want to fit very deep into the reflector anymore because of the wire connections to the star. Generally I try and get them as flat as possible and even end up sanding the reflector a bit to get more clearance for the wires and nice flush fit. This may not be necessary if you can get the wires as flat as possible.

yeah i have that problem. thanks for the tip. i have seen people take out the whole flat part of the reflector to make it sit a little deeper. ill sand the reflector a bit to solve that problem.

You should be able to get it pretty flush by getting the wires as flat as possible and as close to the outer edge as possible. If you heat up the wires you can really get them flat by quickly smashing them down with a screwdriver before they cool down.

thanks for the tip! +1

beamshots are up! finaly

Thanks for sharing your mod dentilloxie. looks like you have built yourself a real nice light.

Thanks for the write-up. The ZY-T08 is probably my favorite light to mod.

it is one of my favorite light for the price…
you’re pulling 3.5A from 2.8A 105C driver? :quest:

I added 2 amc7135 chips on the driver.

I’m getting 4.76A tailcap readings on my T08 by simply putting a jumper across the sens resistor of the its stock driver. :slight_smile:

does someone have pinout of the chip (marked as szd01a). if the pinout is the same as a atmel tiny13a i could reprogram the chip.