Hacking a NiteHawk Luxeon for more lumens?

[NickBull]

I have two NiteHawk Emitter bicycle lights, one of which seems to have dimmed noticeably compared to the other. (One is a headlamp, the other is a handlebar lamp.) These are the first-gen Luxeon NiteHawks, with only two power settings and about an 8-hour run time (as opposed to the Digital Emitter models which had a bunch more power settings but much shorter runtime).

So I'm wondering if it would be possible to retrofit a more-powerful LED into the existing NiteHawk case. Maybe cooling would pose a problem?

Has anyone hacked a NiteHawk to do this?

Oh, by the way, my EE expertise consists of 10th grade electric shop plus whatever we learned in first-year college physics. So if you can dumb your response down just a touch I'd be immensely grateful

Thanks in advance.

Nick

 

[znomit]

Ahhhhh, the NH emitter, this got me hooked on leds.
Throwing a newer LED in there will brighten things up, no need to worry about cooling.
Never figured out how to get the unit open though, I think its glued.

 

[Zero_Enigma]

I've got an old non digital nite hawk emitter here. Did a google search and found this CPF posting so casting resurrection right now.

Has anyone modded thier nite hawk emitter? Would like to know how they did it. What is the max voltage the unit will take? IIRC batteryspace.com has some 6v battery packs for the nitehawk so I'm assuming 6v but thinking there has to be some regulator or something as 6v would fry the LED.

What LED would work with the mod? Thanks in advance.

 

[unterhausen]

did you figure out how to get it apart? It's likely that many of the newer leds will work, because power ratings have been increasing

 

[znomit]

I'm guessing the "boil in a bag" technique might work with this one.

 

[Steve K]

Boil in a bag? Just how literal is this?

I'm familiar with using heat to soften up adhesives and potting material, though. At work, the standard method is to set a thermal chamber at 85C and let the part soak in there for an hour or two. It is still some work to get things apart, but it's better than when the part is at room temperature.

Steve K.