Mag mod questions

I have a 4D Maglite that my brother left alkalines in, and well...you know the rest. My dad managed to remove the batteries, but for some reason the light won't work.

My brother works in the lighting department at IKEA and there's a certain LED light (JANSJO I believe) that's prone to breaking, so when one of the lights that are on display break, he saves me the LED. From what I can tell it's a SSC P4.

I also have this cheap LED bulb that's really just a resistor and an aluminum heatsink that fills up the entire base. The LED that was on that was probably a Luxeon I, but it was burned out.

I combined the three things along with a LM317 (set to output 700ma), and a telescope lens that happened to fit and made a fairly nice light. The whole thing is powered by a 9.6v RC car battery

I have a few concerns though:

-The LED is current limited, so it can't get destroyed by overcurrent, but are there any dangers of letting it run at high temperatures for long periods of time?

-If there are problems with heat, is there an easy way, without ordering anything online, to make a heatsink for the LED? Possibly copper pipe caps?

-What's the best way to cut the body of the light shorter? (I really wish I could cut it down and rethread it to 2D or something custom but I'm very limited on resources, so I just want to cut it down and mount it to the battery pack somehow)

Hope that isn't too confusing, and thanks in advance.

Hi

1. You'll need to build some propper heat-sink, because you're using a Maglite, I would recommend transferring as much heat to the body of the lamp as possible ( I know it's not that easy, but if you can find some alloy or copper that fits the tube, that would be the way to go. Try a search on o-sink to get an idea.

2. Instead of going with the LM317, I'd buy a driver from dealextreme, only costs a few bucks, and I guess it would be more efficient.

3. Making the light shorter without a lathe has been done, by removing the threads on the mag head, and somehow fixing the shortened tube, but best would be re-threading (but I know, it's not always easy to find someone who has a lathe and does work like this for a realistic price.

Thanks for the reply, chefgrill, but you didn't exactly answer any of my questions...

Just to clarify, I don't have the option to order anything online. I'm looking for stuff I could find at Home Depot.