Modding out of sentiment: Help me bring a MagLite into the current century

When I was in middle school, my dad bought me a 2D MagLite for camping trips. For some reason, I was reminded of it a couple of days ago and dug it out of the bin. Cleaned it up, turned it on, and concluded it must have had nearly dead batteries. So I put a fresh set in. It didn't get any brighter. Googling, I have found out that it's no brighter than my keychain flashlight! This being the Century of the Fruitbat, that just won't do! Additionally, as a kid I "cleaned" the reflector and lens at some point and destroyed both of them. Searching here on CPF, I have found, in general, how I want to proceed but there's a couple of details I need advice on.

I am going to be using Malkoff's 240 lumen drop in. I need to replace the front lens and I've found flaslightlens.com for that. I also need to replace the reflector, and I've found a couple of places for that. I know also that I want to have the light be more of a thrower since I will be walking around with a floody headlight on.

So, my questions:
1) For the lens, what material should I get? My primary concern is durability, so I want the most impact resistance and scratch resistance. Obviously, it also needs to be able to handle whatever heat the Malkoff drop in puts out. Options are hardcoat acrylic, Borofloat glass, Acrylite, and UCL glass.

2) For the reflector, should I get another plastic MagLite reflector or should I go with one of the aluminum ones available from Kaidomain. If one of the aluminum ones, which one/which texture?


Thanks guys.

For throw, get the mag reflector. For the lens, the Malkoff LED doesn't put out anywhere near enough heat to bother the plastic ones, and a glass lens that size is prone to breakage if dropped. I recommend one of their newer lenses, the UCLp AR acrylic, then the Hard Coat Acrylic, then if you want to see if a glass lens is durable enough go with the UCL glass lens. There's no advantage to borofloat in this low temperature application.

I thought you could order the stock reflector from Malkoff's site with the cam already removed?

PCC said:

I thought you could order the stock reflector from Malkoff's site with the cam already removed?

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You can, but I wasn't sure if that was the best choice.

To see if I have this right, glass lenses in general are more scratch resistant but acrylic lenses in general are more impact resistant? So a UCLp AR acrylic lens is an attempt to have both impact resistance and scratch resistance?

williaty said:

To see if I have this right, glass lenses in general are more scratch resistant but acrylic lenses in general are more impact resistant? So a UCLp AR acrylic lens is an attempt to have both impact resistance and scratch resistance?

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Yes the acrylic lenses will be more impact resistant while the glass lenses will be more scratch resistant (but lower impact resistant). The UCLp AR acrylic lens is basically the same as the hardcoat acrylic lenses with a anti-reflective coating applied to both sides; it will not be any more scratch resistant compared to the hardcoat acrylic lenses. Please note that if you wish to clean the hardcoat acrylic lens you will need to use a cleaner designed for acrylic such as Novus (1) Plastic Clean & Shine.

I'd order the stock plastic reflector from somewhere like zbattery.com as they are faily cheap there and you can order a few for not that much. Metal reflectors are mainly used for high-powered incandescant setups (e.g. search for ROP) and are not necessary for LED applications.

As long as your current mag reflector is in good shape you just need to take a hacksaw and lop off most of the cam part.

Yoda4561 said:

As long as your current mag reflector is in good shape you just need to take a hacksaw and lop off most of the cam part.

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As I noted in the first post, I "cleaned" the reflector and lens and ruined both of them.

Oh whoops, missed that. Yeah grabbing a pre-cut reflector from Malkoff Devices would probably be best.

Ordered the mod and the reflector from Malkoff tonight. Ordered 3 different lenses from flashlightlens.com because I couldn't make up my mind. Let the modding commence!

Also ordered a Surefire X300 and I got a closeout 200 lumen Surefire Z2X last week. I am now officially on bread and water rations to make ends meet :lol:

The reason I mentioned the pre-cut reflector from Malkoff is because its so convenient to order both from the same place. All Gene needs to do is to start offering replacement lenses and it'll be a one-stop-shop.

Everything has arrived and been assembled. The parts I used were the Malkoff dropin for the 2D Maglite, a cutoff stock reflector from Malkoff, and a UCLp acrylic lens from Flashlightlens.com. I am cautiously happy with the results. The real test will be taking it out and using it around camp. Inside, the results initially appeared quite disappointing. However, when I took it outside at night, I was quite surprised with the performance. Though this is barely brighter (240 lumens rated by Malkoff vs 205 lumens in my Fenix LD20+) than other lights I already have, it definitely lights things up considerably farther away. I was surprised how brightly it would illuminate the tops of the trees in my front yard. Shooting across the main road, it would rather brightly illuminate trees 88 yards away and was bright enough to see if there was a person or animal (though not to ID) at about 130 yards. I'm pretty certain I could see it slightly brightening the side of a white house at 288 yards.

The one thing I don't like, and I think this might just be a Maglite thing since the stock flashlight did it too, is that the focused beam is too narrow inside of about 50 feet to actually be useful since you have to have the beam RIGHT ON something or you won't see it. If you try to adjust the focus to broaden the beam, you end up with a dead spot in the center where there's almost no light.


Overall, I think the results are well worth spending $65 to upgrade something that has sentimental value.

That's the price of throw. There are aluminum orange peel reflectors available, though they're a bit harder to find than they used to be from US based sellers. Get the kind that have the removable cam instead of the permanently affixed one. Also check dimensions to make sure the base of the reflector won't hit any exposed leads on the module. You can also experiement with either a diffusor in front of the lens, or going with one of those P 99 frosted acrylic lenses from Flashlightlens.

Well, throw is where I want this one to end up anyway. I'll be wearing a Zebralight H51Fc on my head, so that covers floody and close up. This is meant to take over farther away than the H51Fc reaches. Now, a floody light with 2000 lumens might be the best of both worlds! :laughing:

Glad you are happy with the results. Maybe eventually in time you will go the DIY route. More and more lumens can be addicting.

I don't have the 2D one I have the 3-6D in a 2D body with 2 imr lion so my results may be different. When I put mine together I ordered both the smooth and orange peel from kaidomain. The smooth is nice, but I ended up keeping the OP because the throw of the smooth wasn't much better. they both throw out past where I can decipher what I am looking at, but the OP has a bigger hotspot. The OP at about 12 feet from a white wall in my house has a hot spot about 19 inches across. Well worth the $10