What do I need to disassemble a SF KX4

It's too late to just sell it (I have the springs and spring retaining ring out), so I want to get it all to pieces, and see what I can do with it. I haven't been able to get the ring holding the lens in to budge, even after multiple freezer and boiling water cycles. I don't have any specialized tools, however. What I have been able to find by searching seems to rely on being able to view long-gone images.

A while back I picked up a titanium tool that works with Surefire's plastic retaining rings, and Xeno bezel rings. I think you'll need to source one if you're going to successfully open the head. The one I bought isn't available anymore, but do a Google search for "xeno bezel removal tool" and you should find plenty of options.

TW02 and W01. Easy to find, with the right key words! They'll be helpful with other heads it looks like, too. Thanks.

Good luck with your efforts. Mine came off with a mousepad, a rubber strip around the head, some heat with a soldering iron and a lot of twisting and grunting.

My Malkoff M60 lives in it now, along with some thick copper wire and a bit of thermal paste. A Solarforce spring around the back of the dropin provides reliable negative contact.

Double post sorry deleted.

I've already pretty well destroyed one old mouse pad, with no luck. The bezel's ridges tear right into the foam rubber. The plain G2 and 6P bezels, with the bigger hex notches, and otherwise smooth rings, I've been able to get apart without too much effort, for lens replacement. Just by popping them in the freezer overnight, heating them back up, and then working at them a little would do the trick, with anything grippy that could fit around the inside of the ring. This is my first of this kind of bezel, since it's generally been cheaper to get an incan host, so I don't know if it's especially stubborn as a sample, or not.

Funny thing is, when I got another KX4, I realized the best tool to get the stubborn bezel ring off would be another KX4.

Long overdue update. I just noticed this thread in my subscribed list, but just haven't been active, lately. Thanks, everyone.

The W01 stayed OOS everywhere, and the TW02 just didn't look like it would handle things. I ended up noticing and purchasing Overready's tool, that I found thanks to cland72's magic keywords. The problem head took being tightly clamped into a vice, and a few good whacks on the ratchet, to loosen up the ring, ripping off some of the protective coating from the front rim, and bending the head into an oval on the bottom, even though it was on a body (reverted by squeezing the other sides in the vice). Two Danco #35577 perfectly space a Malkoff M61 dropin from the stock lens, bezel ring, and seal ring, without affecting the beam any more than the bezel ring itself, and allowing for excellent heat transfer.

Now, instead of an old G2L/KX4 going unused, I have a bright M61 powered G2L, with no heat issues, that gets about 1.5hrs out of a 17670.

Here's mine with a stock KX4 and two other lights.

cland72 said:

Click to expand...

The ones I have on hand:

Tan G2 w/ M61LL 219B V2 and new lens (originally a 219A dropin, but a Tenergy LFP cell died, damaging both the drop-in and original lens before I could stop it). That is my most used multicell flashlight.
Yellow G2L w/ M61 219B (the bit of rubber sticking out is flashing, not the seal being deformed)
MDC 219B

Detail:

That missing chunk came off with the bezel ring, not from an impact.
You can see the nylon rings, too. The height match is close enough to the original insert that the seal is at least dunk-proof, along with providing plenty of pressure to hold the dropin in place, and transfer heat.
You can't see the heatsink grease on the mating surface. Even after an hour standing in the open, it's not uncomfortable to the touch, and the dropin itself is only just uncomfortable to touch. The all-plastic G2 with the M61LL gets hotter, both inside and out.

I noticed that while the M60/61 does fit, it's loose inside.
I also had to fashion an aluminum ring and copper wire to fill the gaps between the dropin and the aluminum of the head, and used thermal paste as well.
A few minutes running my M60 and the head is hot to touch.

That M61, installed into an all-plastic G2, got burning hot in just 2-3 minutes (once the head got warm, I took it out to see).

In that G2L/KX4, it gets the whole plastic body warm after 5+ minutes, including the rubber switch boot, so it's definitely transferring heat through the battery tube pretty well, along with the bezel itself. It's not even a minute before the front of the head is noticeably warm. After an hour of being on, standing face-down, on formica (mentioning that just in case heat transfer through the bezel ring is non-negligible), and still clearly in regulation (it has a very noticeable quick rise in output, as it drops out, which occurs around 1:20 (only the cell's 3rd cycle, and it dims fast, after that point), with the 17670 I'm using), I took it apart to check it out. It was uncomfortably hot, but not even close to burning hot.