Brinkmann Rebel/Longlife MiniMag Mod

I've been thinking about this for a while now, and I've seen at least one other person consider the mod here on CPF. Has anyone considered gutting a Brinkmann Rebel or Long Life and converting a MiniMag or Brinkmann 2AA? I haven't had the courage to dissect my light as of yet, but from what I've noticed, the lens would grind down, and the electronics might fit.

I'm an long time flashaholic, avid lurker, and new member. When I first came across this site last month, I spent several weeks flipping back through the old topics, and running searches. The wealth of knowledge here is addicting... plus no one seems to ask the question "why do you need another flashlight?"

I'm sure someone has preceded me with this concept, and someone else has exposed the internals of a Brinkmann model by accident or design (???violence???). There certainly seem to be a few complaints about the plastic body failing. Any information, pictures, ideas anyone?
Thanks

Originally posted by Rail:
The wealth of knowledge here is addicting... plus no one seems to ask the question "why do you need another flashlight?"

Click to expand...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I've asked myself that question many times...

Neat idea - but too much work considering the mod would still only be as bright as a Brink Longlife...

I like investing the time I have for modding using higher perfomance Luxeon replacements.

The Rebel is fairly easy to "disembowel" but I am still stymied by the fatter and shorter "Long Life" light. The Rebel's bezel unscrews with a little manual effort, and then the plastic lens can be removed, then the PC board and plastic reflector / LED assembly can be "released".
This leaves enough room for a 1W Luxeon Star (not /O) and appropriate step up circuitry.
A NXO5 optics can be crazy-glued (very carefully) to the inside of the Rebel's bezel, the diameter is perfect.

Methinks even Houdini himself would be thwarted by attempting to open up the Long Life. Unless he just happened to have a sledgehammer handy 8^0

/ed B

Check out this http://www.brightguy.com/detail_int.tpl?cart=10446508408601&sku=PRIIMP2NY

Hemingray, I TOTALLY understand where you're coming from with what you said about the 'Long Life'. It IS seamingly impossible to get into the guts of that light. They must have some pretty good glue holding all that pastic together. I may try other methodes that are just short of total destruction of the light. With all the new lights I've recently purchased, it's pretty much never used anyway.

I have successfully taken apart my BLL and it has no glue holding it together.It just snaps together easily and securely.
If you take the switch end off and look into the head end you will see there are 4 tabs that snap into 4 slots in the body.What I did was I took 2 jewelers screwdrivers and gently pried 2 tabs on one side away from their slots at the same time as pulling the head end away from the battery part.
If you do this just right , it comes apart without breaking anything.
The reflector has to come off to get the led out so you have to melt the 4 tabs that hold the reflector to the pc board.If yoy dont get crazy with the solder iron you can melt the tabs back into place when you're done.
Also ,you have to de-solder the connections to the battery holder to get the board assembly off.
I put a red LED from a broken Logitech optical mouse in mine and it's just about blinding!Way overdriven ,but the LED was free , so who cares!
Have fun and dont burn your fingers...

There's a message thread around here someplace that gives a method for opening the BLL I think.

I figured it was the four tabs, but with my big phat phingers and total lack of manual dexterity ( and patience), it is a daunting task... I can manage to get two tabs released, but always manage to mess it all up when I try for #3 and #4. The Rebel is two wider tabs, nice and easy.

Looks like a 3/4 copper pipe cap will be perfect for a Luxeon star heatsink. I have two more Rebels waiting "surgery" plus I couldn't resist the lone Brinkmann LX I spotted at Walmart.

/ed B in NH

One method I've used: Get 5 heavy-guage metal paper clips, and a pair of needle-nose pliers.

Open up the clips so they look like an 'L' and use the pliers to make a 90-degree bend a few millimeters from the end of the long leg. The fifth clips is a spare, as the tend to bend at the next step. I'll call the Paper-clips 'crowbars' and the annoying plastic clips in the light 'clips.'

Reach into the body of the light, and put the tip of the crowbar hook under the clip, and rotate the crowbar to pry the clip up. While holding that twist, angle the long shaft of the crowbar so it gets between that plastic clip and the body of the light. (it's not as hard as it sounds, really.)

Repeat with the other 3. Then just pull on the battery-frame and it should pop right out. The hardest part is actually avoiding knocking loose one of the crowbars while positioning another. To avoid having it re-lock when you reassemble the light, line it up correctly eith the little notches, and rotate it about 20 degrees, enough to avoid the latches, but not enough to mess up the switch's connection.

Now you can tell everyone you got a BLL apart with 4 crowbars. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/twak.gif

I have successfully modded 3 BLL lights putting into one, a UV LED, in the second, I brightened it up a little by replacing the 3.5K (odd value) resistor with a 2.2K (Makes a big difference. I've tried using a 1K and boy was it bright, but one of the transistors overheated and the unit shut down without damaging the transistor. After a few mins, it would then relight for 10 seconds or so until the transistor overheated, so I replaced that transistor (NPN) with a highter power unit, and voila, a super bright BLL white. On the third, I kept everything stock except I replaced the white LED with a cyan one, and whoa boy, a surreal quantity and quality to the beam I must say! These mods were relatively easy since there is NO surface mount components to fuss with (my eyes ain't that great) and they took at most a half an hour each, including playing with that 3.5K resistor value. Lowering the value increases the light, but as you approach 1K, the NPN transistor will start to overheat. I found that a 2.2K will brighten it up a little and cause no thermal problems whatsoever. A pretty simple two transistor, two resistor, one cap, and one inductor circuit. The inductor in mine was an 82 micro henry one (the greenish component that looks like a resistor)

FYI

Ed.

I have a set of InReTech Mini Mag AA adapters coming, maybe I'll see if one can be retrofitted into a "Rebel". Why?
Just like Edmund Hillary said about Mt. Everest, "Because it is there..."

If it works, modify it. If it's broken, fix it then modify it. If it still doesn't work, then it was a crappy (flashlight) design to start with.

/ed B in NH /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif