Terralux to P4 Mod Done

Wow what an easy mod , ok , some thought needed ,

Output now is 4700Lux @ 1 Meter . and taking o.51mA with 3xD Heavy duty Dry Cells .
Hot spot is a little small , but there is some flood , ill wait till tonight to see how it goes . I might play around with the reflector to see if the hot spot can be enlarged or not .

click to enlarge

First picture is the Cree P4 mod to the terralux Unit 3D Maglite
The next picture is from my 6D Maglite with original terralux unit installed .

Great mod, thank you for the photos.
Now I have to mod my too.
Is there any heat problem. How long did you run it?

I mod the 3D magled with P4 and it get hot (goes into the angry blue) after about 2-3 min.
Thanks again

No heat problems - The Terralux unit itself acts as a heatsink , and then the brass stem holding the terralux will also take some of the heat - if any .

Which is why I went Cree P4 , I knew it put out enough light for use around the house , and would not run as hot/warm as a Q5 .

I dont need to light things up 200 yards away , at best , indoor use and around the yard , 20 yards max . The P4 is perfect .

For those who would like to Q5 there Terralux , I dont see the problem , the T-unit itself should have enough mass , and the brass stem it screws onto will also help .

If anything , I think the P4 runs disappointingly cool , if thats a bad thing .
+ It will throw out to the 100yard mark , give or take .

Looks like a nice mod!

The Cree XR-E P4 should run hotter then the Q5, unless you are luck and get a very low Vf (forward voltage P4) and a very high Vf Q5. The Q5 provides higher output at the same current then the P4, so persuming the same Vf, the Q5 transfers more of the power into light and less into heat, so it should run cooler.

Crees seem to take the heat much better then Seoul P4s.

The Terralux actually has a pretty low mass of metal, not that good for heatsinking.

4700 lux at 1 meter seems pretty low. The stock MagLED drop-in had around 6000-7000 lux at 1 meter according to Quickbeam's lux meter(Flashlight review).

Heavy Duty cells are Zinc Carbon, not a good choice for powering high power LED lights. Alkalines are ahead of them. Could be partually why the lux number is low.

Do you mean spill or flood? Spill is the light around the hotspot, flood is a beam pattern. This light is definitely not a flood type beam.

Eitherway, a good improvement over the original.

A Seoul P4 would work better because of the similar emitting pattern to the Luxeon LED that was in there before, but they turn blue when they overheat, so a Luxeon Rebel 80 or above or one of the higher bin TFFC K2s might be a good choice if you choose to upgrade the terralux you have in the 6D.

2nd Picture is with Terralux [ same vintage ] but in my 6D maglite .

The 6D used to be better , now I think the 3D is better ..[ PS these are the first Terralux units that came out , like way back ]

I was thinking the same thing , batteries holding things back .
Ok so Q5 should run cooler

I might try a Q5 with the next one .

A Seoul P4 U2 bin will give you a beam pattern similar to what the Luxeon now has (except a bit less sharp) so you might want to look into that too. Though you'll probably have the make the heatsink much larger so the LED doesn't turn blue due to overheating. The Cree LEDs also overheat but they don't turn blue until they are being killed so there is much less indication.

yeah, not much I can do about making larger heatsinks , esp as I want to keep the maglites stock , It would be real nice to still have a lathe , oh boy do I have some ideas if I had a lathe

Oh well , for now ill just try and keep it simple , so ill just keep an eye on what folks are doing , and maybe next month order a Q5 on a 14mm base . Maybe by then there might be a R2 on a 14mm base ??

But I have parts on order to Mod a cheap twisty Luxeon to 5 mode Q5 .

I made a Light Box ...

The P4 mod does 180Lux Minimum
6D Maglite/Terralux does 150Lux Minimum

From what I remember, the 2-3 cell terralux and the 4-6 cell terralux have a different driver, which could be a source of the difference.