A little help with Surefire head disassembly?

[OddestMouse]

Long time lurker, here and over at BLF… for as long as I can remember the sites being active. Helped me learn a lot! I joined both sites last night. Talk about procrastination, huh?

The reason I decided to join in on the fun, as the title suggests, is to pull my old (Rev. B, 200/5lm) E2D LED Defender apart without destroying it. I know that I'll likely need to apply heat and call the fire department to help me open it, but which direction are the threads running? Attached is a crude depiction of the rotation directions and where I believe the two parts mate. The head is two-piece, yes?

 

[thermal guy]

Should be left to loosen. But that thing is tight. Afraid.

 

[bigburly912]

Go to harbor freight and get a 5 bucks Pittsburg rubber strap wrench. Tighten it down and turn left.

 

[F89]

Should be left to loosen. But that thing is tight. Afraid.

Correct ^

You'll need plenty of heat (quite likely).

These are a bit trickier than the newer heads with three pieces showing (bezel, mid, base).
The mid piece on yours is actually internal but it still has threads both ends for the bezel and base.
You need to separate all three pieces, depending on what you're trying to achieve. Removing the base gives access to the driver, the bezel gives you access to the LED (and retained TIR).

I've done an EB1, E1D, and EDCL1T recently.

 

[Monocrom]

Standard threads. Get you a good strap wrench for that job.

 

[F89]

Standard threads. Get you a good strap wrench for that job.

I'd be surprised if strap wrenches alone would get the job done.
I've found that I need to really heat them up, strap wrenches slip even when the head is sufficiently heated.
Strips of rubber and some kind of locking pliers have worked for me.
The tricky part about the old heads is that there isn't three surfaces to get purchase on. The middle portion which houses the driver on one side and LED on the other Is threaded completely inside the bezel and base portions, so you have to grip one side or the others bare threads to remove the end which didn't come off first. If you follow me.

The newer heads have exposed surface area. The assembled heads of the newer one look like three pieces whilst the older ones look like two, both are three pieces once disassembled.

There's plenty of threads locker on these things.

 

[BillBond]

Some heads will come apart, but some will not come apart no matter what you do.

 

[Flynn's Arcade]

A few Jetbeam Rotary and Surefire KL series lights I've modded required a barrel vise to open, just a plethora of threadlock on them. I didn't want to use heat on the Rotary lights and damage the magnets on the rings. The barrel vise made the ordeal easier and no damage to the lights.

 

[desert.snake]

Some SF heads used a strange black thread locker, it did not soften even with strong heat, and my friend heated the head so much that the reflector coating swelled. Belt wrench were slipping and not working. I would recommend a large powerful wrench + rubber spacer + carpenter's vice

But I see this vice for barrels and it's wonderful, for the first time in my life I see such a sweet device ⬇️⬇️

A few Jetbeam Rotary and Surefire KL series lights I've modded required a barrel vise to open, just a plethora of threadlock on them. I didn't want to use heat on the Rotary lights and damage the magnets on the rings. The barrel vise made the ordeal easier and no damage to the lights.

 

[Kestrel]

I have used hose clamps with a thin strip of rubber sheet under each. You can tighten the heck out of the clamps with a screwdriver, then just use crescent wrenches on the clamps - the screw stub of the clamp will bear suffiently against the crescent wrenches.

 

[DRoc]

My original Fury Defender was brutal. I was a tech in a shop at the time and two of us hanging off the damn thing didn't even make it budge. And that was with strap wrenches. Never got it off, just used 17670 or 16650

 

[Kestrel]

I ran into some of the fabled black SF 'loctite' on a tailcap disassembly recently. Was stumped until I remembered the boil-in-water trick; worked just fine, just a little easier with no electronic parts there tho.