Mini maglite mod.

Hi eveyone, ive not posted on here for a while so i hope this is in the right place,

Anyway, i bought myself my first ever mini maglite AA, i had planned from the start to mod this light using an off the shelf drop in, which in essence is what ive done.

I decided to got for the terralux tle-5 instead of the tle-5ex, reasons were that i wanted longer runtimes and it was cheaper.

I installed the upgrade and was not very pleased, it focused but it was not as tight as pictures online would have you believe, those pictures must be taken from about 1 foot away to get the spot to look as tight as they do.

So i decided to modify the original mini mag reflector to fit by drilling the hole out to 8mm and hand sanding untill the led was at my desired height, once the sanding was finished i then gave the reflector an orange peel texture by spraying a few coats of hairspray onto it.

I also installed a terralux tcs-1 clickie which is very nice aswell.

Pic's..................

Control shot, not really dark,



The rest.





Here is a before picture with the standard terralux reflector set to maximum tight spot and positioned 5 feet away from the wall.



Here is the after picture with my modified mag reflector set to tightest spot and again its 5 feet away.



I know it doesnt look like a massive difference, but to the eye the modified orange peel mag reflector is focused a lot tighter and has a really smooth transition between the spot and the flood, the terralux reflector just makes it look like one huge washed out dim flood light at this distance.

So there you go, about 30 mins worth of drilling and sanding and im now actually pleased with my first mini maglite.

thanks for reading, Vinny.

Looks good! I like the hair spray orange peal idea.

I'd be curious to see how the coating holds up over time and usage. Wouldn't mind seeing an update, if you think about it, some time down the road with how it does. Thanks!

Thanks for the reply,

Ive been doing the hairspray orange peel for a while now, i did the stock maglite reflector on my 2d rop low a while back when i wanted more flood than my fivemega bi-focal reflector has to offer, this has lasted against the heat of the rop low bulb for a long time and i use that light a lot,

Pic of relector..........



Beam shot @ 5 feet, taken at same time as the mini mag beam shots.....



As you can see the beam is soooooo smooth! In real life it almost looks like an led with a well focused orange peel reflector, hairspray is the way foward.

That's good to hear. I like the way orange peel reflectors "shape" a beam. I have a couple of lights in mind to try it out on.

Thanks for the idea!