Opinions on upgrading my streamlight TL-2 led

[dirtech]

Here is what I'm working with.

First of all has anyone upgraded one of these? Or, can those of you experienced with modding your lights give me your opinion on the level of difficulty to upgrade this light? I have no experience with this stuff, thought I'd start learning on this one since I now have other better lights.

Anyone have any suggestions on the feasibility or any particular led I could swap in there. I think this has a luxeon led and I could use this led http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.2026. This would double the output to 80 lumens.

 

[DM51]

I have edited your post to put line breaks between the photos - without them the photos appear side-by-side, and people have to do a lot of horizontal scrolling.

 

[dirtech]

I opened it up and here is what I got.

There is no turning back now.

I have to figure out how to get that plastic bit out to see whats inside.

Also, if I'm going to put a new star in there I'll have to add some new wire as I totally ripped the existing wire off the star unexpectedly. I guess I should have desoldered the wires first before applying torque. I didn't think the star would move with the aluminum cap. Oh well.

 

[old4570]

Looks like there are some small holes in the plastic retainer ?
If there too shallow , drill them out lightly ..

Then with narrow nosed pliers [ grind them if you need the tips smaller ]
Unscrew the cap , or pull out if it does not screw in ..

Cant tell from the picture ....

So new LED + driver ..

what size driver will fit ?

 

[dirtech]

Well I was going to just replace the star with a 80 lumen P4 from DX, but I screwed up a bit. When I removed the aluminum top I sheared the wires connecting the driver to the star. So, I had to remove the plastic backing so I could access the driver and hopefully add some new wire to reattach a new star. That is not going to happen at this point because there was no way that plastic was coming out. I destroyed it basically. But, all hope is not lost. I think if I can thread the aluminum piece that holds the reflector in, with enough tweaking, I can covert this light into something that will accept a pill from my L2 drop in. That is make this light P60ish compatible. I'll post some pics later too drunk now.

 

[dirtech]

Alright, I have a working flashlight with my L2 dropin in this streamlight. It needs some refining ( i need to get the led to sit further into the reflector and make it more centered). I'd like to thread the aluminum collar that holds the reflector in place so that the pill is more secure and centered. It's a bit weird to have a 5 mode pill in a momentary on twist on user interface, but if I can get this figured out I may purchase a single mode pill that will be about 5X brighter than this light was originally.

Pics later in case anyone is watching.

 

[dirtech]

Here is the aluminum housing that contains the driver and my attempt to remove it. It would not budge.

So on to plan B.

I need to open up the aluminum collar that the pill is sitting on. I also want to add threads to it if I can find a tap thingy big enough that will match the threads on the pill.

Right now the led is sitting below the reflector by 2-3 mm. Here it is compared to an M60

M60

TL-2 with Solarforce 5 mode pill.