I just swapped the P7 in my bastid for an XM-L. I used a blank P7 star from DealExtreme as a spacer. I suppose if you were getting rid of the P7 on your bastid, you could salvage the star from it. Sand the PCB and copper off to expose the bare aluminum for best heat transfer. I used arctic silver epoxy to hold the 2 stars together (forming a ghetto-star) and put some thermal grease between the bastid body and the ghetto-star (there was none previously!! :duh2
. The screws which held the P7 in place were not re-used. They just fell right out without even using a screwdriver when I took the bastid apart, so I don't think they were doing anything, anyway. This thing just oozes with quality. :thumbsdow Another note, the bastid solder joints are tough to melt. A trick for melting those stubborn joints is to use flux, and also use some solder on the iron tip to help conduct heat to the stubborn joint.
Here's where it got interesting. Due to the extra thickness of the ghetto-star, the xm-l solder joints are up higher than they were with the P7, so the bastid reflector touched them. This causes 2 issues: the reflector will not nest all the way down, so the bezel is not able to be screwed all the way, and the aluminum reflector shorts out the LED (very bad
). Luckily the bastid came with a plastic ring over the P7 so I re-used that over the xm-l. To allow the reflector to nest correctly, I used my dremel to make 2 "crevices" in the bastid reflector to accommodate the solder joints. It was a little bit tricky to screw the bezel on and make the crevices go exactly over the solder joint while ensuring the plastic ring is still in place, but luckily that's only something that needs to be done once. The reflector fits down over the ghetto star very snugly so retaining screws are not needed to hold the ghetto star securely to the bastid body allowing for good heat conduction away from the LED.
Once everything was put back together, I fired it up and immediately noticed a tighter hotspot. Also, the bastid seems to heat up a LOT faster than it used to, perhaps due to the better thermal path. It does not get as hot as it used to.
Pics - later... if you want them. It's just a bastid with an xm-l, not too hard to imagine. :shrug:
I hope this information is useful.