Mag C Switch Resistance Fix, 1/8th Stock

Drewfus2101

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Jul 16, 2007
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No pics yet, but please don't throw stones.

This is pretty much a copy/paste form my For Sale thread, but in typing it, I realized that its pretty good info, and no one will read it there, so I'll put it here too:

So with a little free time this weekend, I started messing around with some resistance fixes. I wanted to try something a little different than the norm though.

I'm just not a big fan of the + connection spring, so I wanted to find a way to remove it. The biggest problem with removing it would be the loss of the quick focus using the reflector cam. No biggie there, as with the aluminum reflector, the cam makes it harder to turn the quick focus than with the plastic cam. Kind of annoying, so I don't use it anyways.

So I decided to take some measurements of resistance in the stock Mag switch. From the very bottom where the + button of the battery would touch to where the + tip of the bulb would touch measured 3.4 ohms resistance. From the - contact screw tip on the back that grounds to the body of the Mag to the top ring that screws down to hold in the bulb measured 0.4 ohms resistance (I see no reason, and there is no room, to mess with the - side).

So with my baseline, I decided to pull out the stock Mag spring and see if I could improve on it. I found a few different length bolts and tried them till I found a length that I liked and worked with the bulb and holder installed. Then I had to lock the bulb holder in place once I had it pushed down all the way so that it was squeezing the bolt like the spring would be and keeping it from moving. I locked it by using a small washer on the set screw follower that is used by the reflector cam for the quick focusing. Once I had all that done, you can still change bulbs just like normal.

I checked the + path resistance and found it to now be 0.4 ohms.

You can still focus the beam just like you would an LED on an heatsink. It just takes longer.

I decided to check the output in my lightbox. Mind you, this is on the SAME batteries as the last time, which was weeks ago, and the same batteries as the beamshots, and the same batteries that have been in this light that I've been testing with. Once in the lightbox, you can actually watch the numbers drop like a timer. So any small amount of runtime will reduce the light output greatly (remember 30 minutes runtime). The lightbox showed an increase of 30% overall output.

I guess I'm going to have to get new beamshots and pictures of what I did. It doesn't look that much brighter to my eyes, but I'm more of a numbers guy anyways.

link to for sale thread:
http://www.cpfmarketplace.com/mp/showthread.php?p=2122597#post2122597
 
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