QIII Direct Drive mod
First you will need to open the bezel. Instructions
here.
Personally, I use a hair dryer and protection gloves. I heat the zone between bezel ad body, turning the light slowly and each 10 seconds or so I try to open it (be carefull with the clip, you can bend it). Usually it will not take more than one minute. If you want to take out the reflector, do it immediately, while the head is hot.
Once opened this is what you should see:
You have to unscrew the plastic retaining ring, for this I use scissors. Then take out the light module. Be carefull not to loose the copper contact ring that it is under it.
Now you have to unsolder the wires to separate the luxeon and the driver.
At this moment you can choose to also exchange the luxeon to a better bin, and also the heat sink, that as you can see it is small. ViReN has great heat sinks for the Q-III that you can find
here
You will need also to make a PCB for the battery contact similar to the original one:
I personally prefer to reuse the Q-III inefficient board. I just unsolder all the components, and then using a DMM look for the continuity points for anode and cathode. This is the final result:
Now put everything back (don't forget the copper ring) are you are done. I put some thermal grease (I use Artic Ceramique) in the sides of the heat sink, but be careful not to isolate the PCB from the copper ring and the body.
The DD Q-III works great with Li-ion batteries, see the runtime chart for a TWOJ (it is safer to use a *K bin)
After that it will run for hours (I stopped at 8) with a dimm light, and still going over 2.7v, so you can use unprotected cells without problem.
However, forget about regular CR123, they directly will produce a dimm light (probably during days)
About the IMS 20 reflectors I bought mine from
PhotonFanatic.