Drop ins for Cabela's Alaskan Guide or 3Watt?

After almost two months of reading, educating, and entertaining myself on this site, I finally had to sign up, haha. You guys rock!!! :twothumbslovecpf
I've bought a couple of lights now and are trying to upgrade some of my others too (and wife's, dad's, brother's, haha ).

Anyway, I can't find anything about drop ins or upgrades for the Cabela's Alaskan Guide (combination LED and xenon) and their 3 Watt LED flashlights. Both look to be the same and be slightly narrower than the SF 6P and Cabela's XPG 6P clone. The Alaskan Guide was my EDC light on my last deployment; took a lot of abuse but never failed me :thumbsup:. They are great lights, but with todays technology I really want to upgrade their output.

Anybody know of anything? :shrug:

Kevin1322 said:

After almost two months of reading, educating, and entertaining myself on this site, I finally had to sign up, haha. You guys rock!!! :twothumbslovecpf
I've bought a couple of lights now and are trying to upgrade some of my others too (and wife's, dad's, brother's, haha ).

Anyway, I can't find anything about drop ins or upgrades for the Cabela's Alaskan Guide (combination LED and xenon) and their 3 Watt LED flashlights. Both look to be the same and be slightly narrower than the SF 6P and Cabela's XPG 6P clone. The Alaskan Guide was my EDC light on my last deployment; took a lot of abuse but never failed me :thumbsup:. They are great lights, but with todays technology I really want to upgrade their output.

Anybody know of anything? :shrug:

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Hi welcome to CPF you have a real stumper there. I have their regular xenon flashlights and they take a regular 26mm drop in but that dual out put is a different bird. The website says it has a 4 position switch so it is probably not a regular drop in. I am wondering if it is not built after the surefire A1 aviator series. They are a little narrower and have the outer lights backed by a center one.

If they were regular drop ins I could help but I am not much help on the other one but I bet someone will have some answers for you as there are some smart people here at CPF.

I wish I could help more but Welcome.

Dave

Good thought. And I would agree with you the Alaskan Guide light is about the same as the SF Aviator. They sure do look like it anyway. Upon your comments, I took the two lights apart and as suspected, they are similar and interchangable. While the AG has the seperate reflector, you can still pull it out and put it into the the 3 Watt and vice versa. Interesting though, they actually are threaded and need to be "screwed" in/out. Another thing I noticed is that when I put the 3 Watt lamp into the AG , even though the 3 Watt also has two modes (high and medium, using a clicky), it would only produce the high level.:huh2:
Thanks for your warm welcome and thoughts. I'm sure I'm not the only one wanting to figure this out, so hopefully this will turn out to be a very useful thread.

So I should clarify my statement above. As I think about what I wrote, the two modules do not actually look similar. I guess I was thinking that because they were interchangable and (goes without saying I guess) fit in the same amount of space.

Well, today I thought I would be brave and try to do some modding on my own today. I have 2 SF P60 modules, niether of which I am going to use again with all of the LED ones available. So I decided to experiment. I grinded the reflector down all the way around until it would barely fit in my Alaskan Guide. This worked, kinda. The xenon bulb broke in the process and the reflector lost some of it's luster, probably because it got so hot in the process. I then took the outer spring off, cut the inner spring shorter, then bent it so it would make correct contact with the battery. Everything looks like it will work, though certainly my workmanship isn't pretty. I am going to order a couple of DX drop ins and see if I can do the same with them. Better of course, and without breaking the LED.

Woohoo, I did it! My first flashlight mod! For anyone interested, here is the lowdown:

First pic is of the SF 6P and the Cabela's Alaskan Guide flashlight. The Alaskan Guide is pretty much the clone of the SF Aviator, just as the Cabela's 6V XPG is the clone for the SF 6P. Cabela's also use to make a 3 Watt LED which uses the exact same body as the Alaskan Guide, but is black. These bodies are very similar to the 6P, but are shorter and slimer. Very nice for EDC!


This gives you an idea of how far the reflector has to be grinded down.


Here is the A G with the front end broken down.


P60 drop in #14442 from DX on the left, original module on the right.


I used a standard 6 inch grinder and thick leather gloves to slim it down. The reflector got hot fast, so I could only grind for about 10 seconds at a time, then let it cool down. Fortunately I'm a muti-tasker, so this wasn't an issue for me...well, until the end. As it got close to fitting I got too anxious, did it too fast, and the heat damaged the tip of the reflector a bit. To keep as much heat sink as possible, I grinded it down just enough to fit in and then screwed it all the way in. I also removed the outer spring and cut the inner spring in half and twisted it so it would make a proper connection.

Original on left. Modded on right.


A G reassembled.


A G (left) and SF (right) with same drop. Pic taken during the day.

Flash used. No flash used.


You can see the modded one isn't perfectly round anymore due to my impatients, but it looks better than I thought it would given the damage I did. Other than that, the beam looks pretty close to the same drop in the SF. I am loosing a little bit of throw, but not much, which I expected.

It has made for such a great light, that I am now doing it again with the 2nd drop and another Alaskan Guide flashlight which I picked up in the Cabela's Bargain Cave (SF Aviator = $195, Cabela's Alaskan Guide = $69, Cabela's Alaskan Guide in Bargain Cave because no one knew that low batteries didn't push enough current to run the xenon lamp = $30...SWEET!!).

Hope you can find this useful.

Well, another option for those interested. The Cabela's 3Watt light (other than color, almost identical body and parts with the Cabela's Alaskan Guide) has a threaded LED drop which fits both lights. I had nailbender put a Rebel 100 in one, and just got back the other one which he put in a 3 level XP-G R5. Makes for a really great light. The new version of the A.G. is an LED instead of the xenon. Only pushes 110 lumens, but I figure nailbender can switch out that LED too. How cool would that be. Colored LEDs and a 300 plus lumen white light in such a tiny package, at less than half the cost of a SF Aviator. Here are some pics.

My Cabela's Alaskan Guide and 3Watt lights.
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A.G. head and modded 3Watt drop.
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Drop screwed into head.
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Size comparisons. From left to right: Solarforce L2m, Cabela's Alaskan Guide, Surefire 6p with crenelated bezel and Z49 switch, Surefire Nitrolean, Cabela's 3Watt, and Ultrafire 17650 battery (which fits in the A.G. but is too wide for the 3Watt).
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Nice light deal and project.

Love that sig line.

Thanks! :thumbsup:

Kevin1322 said:

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Whoes clip is that on the G2?

Thanks a million for the write up!! Did you have Nailbender make up a new head/driver???




Dustin

NOOOOB! :duh2:

IDnightowl said:

Thanks a million for the write up!! Did you have Nailbender make up a new head/driver???

Dustin

NOOOOB! :duh2:

Click to expand...

Hey IDnightowl, sorry I didn't see this earlier. The head (module or drop) came with the light. Nailbender modified it with another driver and LED. He's actually done a lot of work for me and does awesome work.

This is just the mod I was looking for. Thanks for posting the AG mod. Kevin1322