Surefire L5 Digital Lumamax focus issue

Today I received a new L5 to replace one that I lost last weekend. The new one is not focused as well as the old one. At the center of the hot spot there is a slighly dark area giving the beam pattern a donut shaped appearance.

Does anyone here know how disassemble the head on one of these so I can get in there and tweak it?

Many thanks,

Greg

its not a easy job the threads on the head are glued, this is a common complaint with the LuxV but it is not a problem. IMO unless you are going to put a new led in your L5 I would just leave it alone.

My all time favorite light. Mine also has a donut hole, but it is bright, bright, bright. I don't hunt walls so it does not bother me, and while some consider it an imperfection (donut hole) I do not, and it focuses better at longer ranges. If you are a regular here you would have known that the KL5 has the famed "donut hole". Whoops, just went back to your post and see it is your first time posting, so you are new here unless you have been lurking for some time. Welcome to CPF. You have picked one of the better Surefire lights.

Bill

Thanks for the responses. My first L5's beam didn't have the donut hole, so I thought this one left Surefire not completely focused. The farthest I use this light is 30 feet. Mostly indoors. At 15 feet the donut hole "looks" to be about 6 inches in diameter. It's not something that would make me send the light back, but I would like to correct it to my preferred focus at some point.

I just started reading here last week. If I had known that the donut hole was common on these L5 lights I would have requested a hand picked one that didn't have it.

After reading here I decided to buy a Tiablo A9 from Batteryjunction. When it gets here I may try to get this L5 apart.


Thanks!

I figured it out!

I made a fixture to disassemble the head without marring it. The LED and driver unit attaches to the main head compartment housing with four screws. I took the four screws out and started experimenting with shims 9moving the LED out of the reflector slightly) to see how it effected the donut hole. .015" improved it a lot, and almsot got rid of it. A .030" shim got rid of it completely. No more dead spot in the center.

I'll take some pics of it all while it's apart in case anyone wants to see the inside of this light. It looks liek it would be easy to replace the LED or the driver. They are seperate, and the driver sits down in a .710" (18mm) recess.

Greg