Rat shack LED plugged in my MiniM*G. Still going..

On a whim, I purchased a 1.7 volt (20ma), red LED while in the shack today at the mall. It is model number 276-307. The wavelength is 660nm, and the output is not bad in darkness. I'm going on one hour now on old, old batteries.

It took 5 minutes to cut the leads right, and to enlarge the hole through the reflector to fit the extra width of the LED. It looks factory, and I checked out it's durability by really knocking the light around (It's a very old Mini).

Cool!

I first did that about 10 years ago, but I used a 3mm LED & didn't need to trim my reflector. At an average of 10ma, good alkaline (not necessarily fresh) batteries @ 3000mah would last 300 hours. The average power usage is probably less than 10ma. I don't believe I ever completely ran a set of batteries down. At some point it would get dimmer than I wanted to use & I'd change the batterries. A fresh set of batteries might overdrive the LED @ something like 50ma. However, I didn't burn mine out. I eventually replaced it with a brighter LED.

Well, I'll probably leave this light in this configuration and have a very looong lasting usable light for emergencies.
Still going strong after 3 hours.

Seems like a good mod (especially at $1.50) if one has an old mag lying around. I'll probably use this one for camping as well, without worrying about packing extra batts for it. I'm going to let it run down until it is unable to be used, then I'll chime in again.

do you think it would be ok with fresh alkalines, or would it fry?

sounds like a good, simple mod.

Bob

Pedalinbob,

I think fresh Alkalines would be fine, though it would be over-driven just a little more. I'm still impressed with this simple mod!

Going on 14 hours straight, and no difference in output.

It lights up a dark room enough that everything is visible (once your eyes are dark adjusted), and it is plenty bright to read by. The beam isn't very smooth, but I didn't expect it to be for $1.50!

At least I brought new life back into an old M*G that was lonely!