Need Help! Bored out my 6P problems

Hello. I visited my non flashaholic buddy who has a machine shop and had him bore out my 6P. I pretty much showed him my 18650 battery and told him to bore it out to make it fit. He did a good clean job, but we did not leave a lip or whatever you call it on the bezel end, so the battery will go all the way through. I'm rocking the M61 and found that it has a contact problem. I believe the LA is loose inside the bezel as it works intermittenly and I have to shake or flick the bezel so it can turn on. The LA is loose inside the bezel when the battery is out of the body. I have not tried the piece of foil trick. Did we bore out too much at the bezel end and its doing this because we didnt leave that bit at the end to make the battery stop and also preventing the LA from making a good body contact? Is there a better trick that the foil fix? Thanks. UPDATE: Tried the foil trick and it worked, but still bummed out it seems kind of a ghetto fix.

Hi, i've bored a couple of bodies out in the past but remembered to leave a lip...

One possibility is, if your buddy is able to measure the bore diameter accurately and then turn a small washer with an outside diameter slightly larger, say 15 microns (0.015 mm) the ring could then be press fitted into the top of the 6P, giving you the ledge back to rest your LA on...

That's my only idea for a more permanent solution. Good luck!

- Dan

I'd just wrap the drop-in in high speed tape or some other conductive tape, which also improves heatsinking. Then you'll have a tight fit and reliable gnd connection.

Ogg Vorbis said:

One possibility is, if your buddy is able to measure the bore diameter accurately and then turn a small washer with an outside diameter slightly larger, say 15 microns (0.015 mm) the ring could then be press fitted into the top of the 6P, giving you the ledge back to rest your LA on...

- Dan

Click to expand...

This is probably the most elegant solution. I've never owned a malkoff dropin but I'm guessing it's body is designed so that the bottom of the dropin is pressed into the housing when the bezel is tightened down. By boring all the way through, the dimension is too large for the malkoff body to be pressed in to make a good contact.

Maybe you can somehow lift the dropin a little bit by shimming it underneath the lip near the head of the dropin. Maybe by doing that you can make a good ground connection there.

badtziscool said:

Maybe you can somehow lift the dropin a little bit by shimming it underneath the lip near the head of the dropin. Maybe by doing that you can make a good ground connection there.

Click to expand...

Get a big thick GITD o-ring!

bend the big spring to a wider diameter
(in case You use it ...)

yellow said:

bend the big spring to a wider diameter

Click to expand...

The OP is using a Malkoff M61 which has no outer spring:

BIGLOU said:

[...] the M61 [...]

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Yes,
You guys took too much stock out of the ID.
The bottom lip of the brass heatsink on your M61 does indeed sit on that shoulder and make quite good contact.

IMHO ,the perfect bore cut for a 6P body is .730" ID x 3.085" deep (from the bare threaded end), leaving the shoulder for the LA to contact, AND the 18650 wont slip through the head when the LA is gone.

I made the same mistake on my 1st attempt. I got in a hurry and didn't think about that shoulder at all.
I remedied the problem with 2 aluminum washers that I cut from the body of a Coca Cola can.

Make your 2 washers about .750" OD, then make your donut hole with a hole punch.
It'll take at least 4 holes with the punch in a 4 leaf clover pattern - then nibble away the remaining points to fully clear your positive contact spring.
Install cell and tail cap snugly, place washers inside tube head, place Malkoff in place and push down firmly.
Washers will conform to ID of tube and sit quite snugly (like a wedge) into the bevel.
Install head/bezel - turn it on!

It's been perfect for my M60L - no rattles - no problems.

I had similar problems running a Malkoff with a Leef body and M2 head

I dont have access to a lathe so I came up with this solution

Interesting. I like that.

I had a similar problem, I used M60** modules in SF clones like FiveMega bodies. I had a pretty wide bezel to body gap which not only aesthetically annoyed me but also didn't put enough pressure on the Z41 switch due to the module not fitting in right. This is especially true if you take say M60LL and try to make it work with 2xAA in a Surefire 9P body - won't work, no contact. Have to file the module to shrink the distance to make reliable contact.

So I used sandpaper to sand down the very bottom of the M** modules for a perfect fit in FiveMega. That was beautiful.

Problem is, they no longer make contact in the original Surefire bodies. I used the aluminum paper trick which worked fine but some of these look like equally good solutions.

Thanks for all the advise guys! The difference in diameter between the bottom of the LA (spring end) and the bored is very small if I have to guess it's probably less than .005. Going to try the spring solution TX101 mentioned I got a spring that came with one of my DX drop-ins. I had thought about making a washer out of aluminum I just have not had time to go to the drawing board. We used mine as a guinea pig, but next time we will leave some "shoulder" on the bezel end to prevent this. I told my friend about CPF and that there was some interest in boreing flashlights. My plan is to convince my buddy to make some bodies and eventually a whole P60 host and even offer boreing services. I will post some photos of my buddys machines and my light just before going under the knife later. lovecpf

Regarding boring services, 18mm boring is covered very well, with Moddoo coming closer than anyone as far as I can tell with regards to economies of scale & large boring batches.

However, there is nobody out there to my knowledge that is set up for doing a lot of 17mm boring (SF E-series, L-series, etc). Perhaps there might be a market for that? :shrug: (I've got a SF L2 that I'm sorta looking to get bored if it wasn't too expensive.)

Thanks for the input Kestrel I will keep this in mind. My buddy is a perfectionist and takes pride in his work. We are going to be playing around with some SS, Delrin and maybe Titanium. Dont know what my buddy will want to charge the only thing extra is the shipping back and forth. I guess you could send in the flashlight and the battery you going to use and we make it fit, unless for sure you know what size you need it bored to. My buddy is real careful with materials, but I also worry about some one saying or trying to comlpain that we damaged their light and having problems (i.e. scratched it or marred the knurreling). I will let the CPF world know.