romisen upgrade?

[s13tsilvia]

Hi All

I have a romisen RC-M4 which i dont use a lot mainly due to it using cr123 batteries, over here in aus they are still pretty pricey and i much prefer to use my fenix l2d instead matched with my zebra 501 headlamp.
But i need something portable and much brighter with plenty of throw and thought i could upgrade the romisen with a better drop in and maybe get a couple of 18650's . If im after mainly just throw what would be my best drop in module available.
I did some research and found that my model does use the p60 host.

Regards Josh

 

[sol-leks]

not sure what you are looking to spend, but "itc_shop" on ebay sells solarforce p60 dropins at very good prices. I think the R2 dropin with 3 modes would be a good choice or maybe the sst-50 dropin although I don't know much about the later, they are pretty new.

 

[s13tsilvia]

Re: romisen p60 dropin help?

im looking to spend anywhere upto 40 bucks or so i guess, if anyone can point me to a good quality high lumen 350+ drop in with single stage mode that would be awesome!

 

[pepekraft]

and maybe get a couple of 18650's

regarding that battery choice, I'm pretty sure I've read that the RC-M4 works with *some* 18650s - and of course I'm completely unhelpful becaues I have no idea which ones. Maybe some are thicker than others? I think you'd be safer going with 17670s.

edit: found it - it's on Bryan's RC-M4 description at shiningbeam.com (just search for rc-m4 - I still don't know when links are appropriate here.)
* Powered by 2 x CR123A batteries, 1 x 17670, and 2 x RCR123 3.6V
* Compatible with some 18650 Li-Ions

 

[Lumenly Challenged]

$40 p60 drop-in = Nailbender xpg

(it's really only 35 send the 5 bucks to NB as a tip or me-finders fee or selfbuilt's battery fund)

lovecpf

 

[qwertyydude]

I have a couple romisen RC-M4's. It is true you can't use extremely thick cells. The inside diameter is spot on 18mm. A lot of the new high capacity cells after their double layer wrapping and including the conducting strip going down the side end up around 18.3 mm or so. I've found that using unprotected 18650 batteries is the only way to guarantee they'll fit since they are never double wrapped. Although some protected 18650's do fit since they use thinner wrapping and are about 17.9mm diameter. It's difficult to know what diameter you'll get except by contacting the vendor. Try getting your batteries from a small online vendor willing to measure cells and you can be using 18650's and will be much happier with your RC-M4.

Also you'll never get 350 lumens from any drop-in module type light. That many lumens is just asking for overheating unless you take the time to wrap your pills in foil to fit in the head. But you might as well just buy a dedicated xp-g light for that purpose, in which case you'll be needing an 18650 battery anyways for any decent run time. So just pick up the correct cells from a distributor who'll measure diameter for you. Then you don't need to shelve your RC-M4.