Surefire 9N LED mod

Hey all, I have a few 9N's (my favorite SF) and I was playing with the idea of giving one a bit of a modern boost. I did some searching, and didn't find too much until I stumbled upon a post on "messerforums.net".

The member has managed to install a Cree XM-L into the head of the 9N, and I am extremely interested in figuring out how!

Here are the pics. Anyone got any ideas how to go about it??






EDIT - Here are some pics of what I would be working with... I guess if I remove the reflector (I believe it will be destroyed) I can place an LED + driver with a new reflector... haven't modded anything yet, so I'm learning

Dime,

The "drop-in" assembly looks large enough for a driver, just a bit of machining. The reflector in the 1st pic looks like a Ledil. What is the stock reflector diameter? Looks doable...

i'm interested also as i have a 9N i would like to breath new life into

The reflector diameter is 35-36mm (no calipers just a ruler :laughing.

Thank you for the reference to Ledil, looking through their stuff now!

You've probably seen my 9N with the adapter to allow me to use a TLS TX-3 head on it. It's a 9N with a turbo head.

I had given it some thought recently and came up with the idea to make a replacement for the silver aluminum part of the head that would allow the stock bezel to be used. It would look stock from the outside, but, would be all new underneath. If you want to use the B90 any driver that can handle a single Li-Ion battery should work. With a sleeve and a different driver you can use a pair of 18650s instead. The run times with two 18650s would be much improved as well. You'll lose the "loosen the head for low" feature, but, you can run a multi mode driver and have modes that way instead. I'll see if I can put something together soon. I want to use a Ledil Iris optic, which is about 35mm across if you don't use their plastic retainer piece. Alternatively, I could use the stock reflector from my M3 since I'm going to try to shoehorn a Ledil Iris in there and I won't need that reflector anymore.

PCC - what you have just mentioned is pretty much exactly what I am thinking of doing!

2 x 18650, 3 mode driver, and the Eva diffused or medium optic.

If you are able to create such a part to build on, that would be ideal!

As a proof of concept I tried putting the Ledil Iris into my 9N bezel as well as the M3 reflector (I've mixed up the Ledil Eva and Iris optics in my head, I've corrected my previous post to reflect this). The Iris fits if I don't use the included plastic mounting cup. The Eva is a lot smaller and it would fit right up to the plastic lens so I didn't try it. The diameter is around 33mm so it will fit for sure. The real surprise is that it almost appears like the M3 reflector was made for this application as the raised ring of aluminum on the reflector for the foam recoil ring hits a shoulder inside the bezel and the rim of the reflector does not appear to be touching the plastic lens but is just shy of doing so. It's such a tight fit that wiggling the reflector from side-to-side results in about 0.1 to 0.2mm of movement. Here's a picture of the M3 reflector in the 9N bezel beside the stock 9N reflector'd guts. I really like the way this looks and I'll probably go with this setup. The Ledil Eva optic should work very well as well since it is both smaller in diameter and shorter overall so the exposed aluminum section for the charging cradle can be covered up since running Li-Ions in this light will mean that you cannot use the cradle charger anymore.

As it happens I have an Eva diffused optic that I had reduced to about 32mm, which won't affect it's optical performance since the outermost 4-5mm are not in the optical path. Hmm, getting more ideas...

Some good developments are coming along!

Looks like this is a possible mod!!