kinda new....bulb upgrade?

im kinda new to the whole flashlight thing, my buddy got me into this, and im kinda addicted...im currently a campus police officer and i just used to carry a rechargeable stream light...well that got stolen...long story....so i have this 3xaaa coleman max led light and i actually like this more then my stream light (probably the led brightness)...anyways, my buddy told me to find an upgrade bulb for it to take it from 115 to lumens to something brighter? i dont care about burning batteries i get them free from the department. i just want this light brighter. after playing with his sure fire im addicted...its kinda sad when his lil single mini leatherman is basically brighter if not more, and his surefire just blinds you.

so anyways sorry with the ramble...what bulb and what do i have to do to get my lil coleman brighter... and i dont want to buy a new light...

His must be one of the surefire that's bulb module exchangable. Then, he can just buy bulb module and drop it in. But, I don't think your coleman 3AAA is bulb exchangable.

something with lithium batteries would help? i can pull the led out i think, i used the search and could find anything, i know to break open the neck requires a vice and big pair of pliers...sorry for all these questions....lol

Nah, that's too much hassle for uncertain result. It's 65 lumen light with red/blue LED, right? It probabaly won't take anything other than 3AAAs. Check it's spec first.

Why don't you ask your friend about the light? I am not asking you buy expensive or the baddest thing, but as a campus police you are, you may need better lights with options. You may able to get good advice out of him.

Could you also get CR123 batteries free? If so you could get a Solarforce L2 with an R2 module pretty cheap (about $25 - $30). That would give you decent brightness, and also the upgrade/modification options of a Surefire 6P. I'm not sure it's worth doing anything with the Coleman unless you enjoy that kind of thing.

so whats a light i could get for 25 bucks that has more then 115 lumens? im looking, i like to have alot of range (throw? i think its called) and alot of brightness up close kinda like almost blinding? im looking at the blinding feature, because its actually quite useful to use when someone doesnt want to pay attention to you

Well, you might find a Solarforce L2 with R2 module for around that money, but are CR123 batteries okay?

What batteries and size do you prefer?
How much throw?

Many of the budget type CR123 and Li-ion battery powered lights can break 120 actual out the front lumen.

:welcome:

scorchx1245 said:

im kinda new to the whole flashlight thing, my buddy got me into this, and im kinda addicted...im currently a campus police officer and i just used to carry a rechargeable stream light...well that got stolen...long story....so i have this 3xaaa coleman max led light and i actually like this more then my stream light (probably the led brightness)...anyways, my buddy told me to find an upgrade bulb for it to take it from 115 to lumens to something brighter? i dont care about burning batteries i get them free from the department. i just want this light brighter. after playing with his sure fire im addicted...its kinda sad when his lil single mini leatherman is basically brighter if not more, and his surefire just blinds you.

so anyways sorry with the ramble...what bulb and what do i have to do to get my lil coleman brighter... and i dont want to buy a new light...

Click to expand...

If you're wanting to buy a brighter light, at a similar price, and substantially smaller, without caring about runtime (~2 hours on high), and aren't in a huge hurry, I'd recommend the Akoray K-109 (single AA). Here's a review. Maybe even order along with the parts to upgrade your MAX to the same or a bit brighter.


First off, I'm assuming it's the same as mine (single emitter, pic here); there's a variety of Coleman MAXes available, so it's hard to know for sure... if it's not, no telling how similar or different its guts may be. The multi-color versions, particularly, are probably quite different.

Short version of following paragraphs: you can get up to perhaps double the brightness with an emitter that runs maybe $5, but it's not as easy as dropping a new bulb in a Mag or SF. Some soldering at the least, maybe some dremel or filing work. You could go nuts and get 4x or more if you also redo the complete drive circuit, and use about an emitter that costs $20ish. If neither of those sounds good, go buy a new light. If it sounds doable (or if you're just curious) read on. (And buy a new light anyway! You never have enough! :welcome

For disassembly, no vise is needed -- it has flats on the body for a crescent wrench, and you can very carefully grip the head tightly with channel-locks and open it without marking it at all. (Don't do this if you really care about marking it up, though, since accidents do happen. You could probably get it off risk-free with a rubber-lined strap wrench.) Key is to get the teeth on the channel-locks properly aligned to two of the eight notches in the head, and then grip it tightly before applying torque so it doesn't slip.

Once you get the head, and reflector, off, you can unscrew a plastic retaining ring and take the pill out. The XR-E emitter is mounted on a ~18mm board, riveted (with hollow rivets the wires run through) to a ~24mm metal base, which is heat-staked to the plastic body of the pill. Not sure what bin the emitter is, I think I heard current ones are P2, which sounds reasonable (they say 115 lm on the packaging).

If you have replacement rivets, this would be upgradeable to Q5 with one of these or similar (assuming the holes match up), but if not you've two options: rework the mechanics of the light significantly (freeing you to use any convenient size of board, including the widely available 19mm hexagonal stars, and use heat-conducting epoxy, screws and nuts, solder, etc. to mount it down) or remove that emitter from the board (leaving the board riveted down) and solder the new one on. Also, I think it's just using a resistor drive, so if you take the metal base off the plastic body you could add a driver; you might squeeze a bit more light out, and definitely keep constant light through the run.

I've got an R2 (the brightest XR-E bin available now) on 19mm star ordered (from here), and will be trying this upgrade when it arrives in a few days/weeks. Gonna open the pill and verify the drive circuit, but not add a driver at this point. (I'm considering a buck driver to run it from 3x10440 (same size as AAA, will fit in the stock holder with very slight modification, but 3.7V each), if/when I get around to it.)

If you're willing to sacrifice some beam tightness, you could probably even upgrade this to an MC-E (wired in parallel), but to really leverage the MC-E you'll want to increase the current (i.e., change the resistor, or add a driver) And serious drive currents for an MC-E will be murder on KOH cells -- it should probably be made direct-drive (from NiMH only), or use a driver and Lithium or NiMH. (But if you wanted to do that, you'd have probably posted in Custom & Mod! )

scorchx1245 said:

so whats a light i could get for 25 bucks that has more then 115 lumens? im looking, i like to have alot of range (throw? i think its called) and alot of brightness up close kinda like almost blinding? im looking at the blinding feature, because its actually quite useful to use when someone doesnt want to pay attention to you

Click to expand...

Might I recommend the TerraLUX LightStar 220 from Battery Junction. $28.00 here but I have seen it as low as $25 locally so it's very close to your budget requirement. I used to own the single mode version of this flashlight. It is bright but short run time on alkaline batteries of only 1 hour. I'm sorry, I really can't remember if it had a lot of throw. It lit up the area pretty well and had a great tint. It runs on 2AA batteries. I gave it to my Dad he liked it so much. I'd check the throw for you but he lives out of town.

If you really want a great thrower though and you have an old Maglite laying around I could instead recommend the Maglite with a Teralux drop-in also sold at Battery Junction. You just have to make sure you get the one for the correct number of cells you will be using. I have bought these for all of my Maglites for around $20 each. I can easily light up my neighbor's house from way across the street. Nice tight beam and rated around 140 lumens.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

Update: I was able to find a thread with beamshots. It looks like it might have decent throw.

Brad

Benson said:

I've got an R2 (the brightest XR-E bin available now) on 19mm star ordered (from here), and will be trying this upgrade when it arrives in a few days/weeks. Gonna open the pill and verify the drive circuit, but not add a driver at this point. (I'm considering a buck driver to run it from 3x10440 (same size as AAA, will fit in the stock holder with very slight modification, but 3.7V each), if/when I get around to it.)

Click to expand...

And... it works! DD R2 >> stock.

I can confirm that it is resistor drive, and uses a 1.2ohm resistor. My cell holder had something like 1ohm of resistance itself, though, so I changed it to direct-drive the R2 -- on some new NiMH LSD cells (~1.3V open-circuit) it only made about 400 mA, so I'm pretty sure it won't overdrive at all, even with freshly charged cells. (It does make me wonder whether a Q5, with typically lower Vf, might have been a better (i.e. brighter) choice here.)

I haven't run it for long periods, but had it on (in an armband) for the better part of a half-hour cooking supper last night, and it didn't get excessively hot, turn blue, or otherwise indicate displeasure at its thermal path, so I think the existing heatsink is fine.