bwaites
Flashlight Enthusiast
I know this has been done, but it was my first complicated mod, mostly because no low resistance 3AA to D series adaptors are out there.
After trying to mod RadioShack adaptors for most of the past month, and having one failure after another, and then nightmares about the failures, I had decided to bag the problem until Elektrolumens gets around to getting some low resistance adaptors in.
However, this morning I saw one of my wifes old film canisters and thought to myself, "thats about the inside diameter of a Mag D!" Sure enough, it was, nice snug fit.
A little hot glue, a trio of plastic dowels, and voila, a 3x3 AA carrier. The end caps were more of a problem, but some decent gauge copper wire, a washer, a little solder, lots of fitting and refitting and after 3 or 4 hours a workable, reasonably low resistance 3x3AA carrier was ready to go. 9 charged AA's and away we went!
Slapped it into a 3D Mag and tried a 6 cell Mag Krypton bulb, (cheap and easy to find!) Light and lots of it! Magcharger levels of light! In fact, setup like this, it was brighter, and whiter, than a stock Magcharger, but not as bright as a Magcharger with the 1160 installed.
So it works, but what about the vaunted Ginseng/Wilkey Level 1.2.2 mod with a Welch Allyn 1185?
Ouch, goodbye MagCharger! Lots Brighter, Lots Whiter! But, Uh Oh, left it on a little too long and started to melt the plastic reflector. Gonna have to get that fixed with a metal reflector I guess!
The Mag krypton bulb is back in and for now we'll stay there until I can come up with some options for a metal reflector. Hopefully something with a light orange peel to knock out the typical Mag rings and things.
This is my new favorite mod, followed by my 2C 3x123 5 cell Mag Xenon. (I think the 2C 3x123 mod is the most underated and pound for pound best mod yet, but as they say in car racing, "there ain't no replacement for cubic inches"!!{I found 2C's on sale for 8 bucks, threw in a 4 dollar bulb, 3 bucks worth of batteries and have more output than my Z3 with HOLA gave me, though admittedly in a little bigger package, but for about 90 bucks less!!})
Wilkey, thanks for the MagCharger lineage thread and all your help and thoughts, including the 1185's, the example of your carrier, and the Aurora idea, which is what really caught my attention about the possiblities of Mag mods.
I forgot to ask about runtimes with the AA's and 1185, and until I have a metal reflector I can't test for them.
Also, will 9 Lithium AA's push the 1185, or do you need the drain capabilities of NiMH's? Finally, can you recharge a Magcharger set up like this in a Magcharger charge cradle?
Thanks again to Wilkey!
Bill
After trying to mod RadioShack adaptors for most of the past month, and having one failure after another, and then nightmares about the failures, I had decided to bag the problem until Elektrolumens gets around to getting some low resistance adaptors in.
However, this morning I saw one of my wifes old film canisters and thought to myself, "thats about the inside diameter of a Mag D!" Sure enough, it was, nice snug fit.
A little hot glue, a trio of plastic dowels, and voila, a 3x3 AA carrier. The end caps were more of a problem, but some decent gauge copper wire, a washer, a little solder, lots of fitting and refitting and after 3 or 4 hours a workable, reasonably low resistance 3x3AA carrier was ready to go. 9 charged AA's and away we went!
Slapped it into a 3D Mag and tried a 6 cell Mag Krypton bulb, (cheap and easy to find!) Light and lots of it! Magcharger levels of light! In fact, setup like this, it was brighter, and whiter, than a stock Magcharger, but not as bright as a Magcharger with the 1160 installed.
So it works, but what about the vaunted Ginseng/Wilkey Level 1.2.2 mod with a Welch Allyn 1185?
Ouch, goodbye MagCharger! Lots Brighter, Lots Whiter! But, Uh Oh, left it on a little too long and started to melt the plastic reflector. Gonna have to get that fixed with a metal reflector I guess!
The Mag krypton bulb is back in and for now we'll stay there until I can come up with some options for a metal reflector. Hopefully something with a light orange peel to knock out the typical Mag rings and things.
This is my new favorite mod, followed by my 2C 3x123 5 cell Mag Xenon. (I think the 2C 3x123 mod is the most underated and pound for pound best mod yet, but as they say in car racing, "there ain't no replacement for cubic inches"!!{I found 2C's on sale for 8 bucks, threw in a 4 dollar bulb, 3 bucks worth of batteries and have more output than my Z3 with HOLA gave me, though admittedly in a little bigger package, but for about 90 bucks less!!})
Wilkey, thanks for the MagCharger lineage thread and all your help and thoughts, including the 1185's, the example of your carrier, and the Aurora idea, which is what really caught my attention about the possiblities of Mag mods.
I forgot to ask about runtimes with the AA's and 1185, and until I have a metal reflector I can't test for them.
Also, will 9 Lithium AA's push the 1185, or do you need the drain capabilities of NiMH's? Finally, can you recharge a Magcharger set up like this in a Magcharger charge cradle?
Thanks again to Wilkey!
Bill
