lightfooted
Flashlight Enthusiast
- Joined
- May 6, 2010
- Messages
- 1,017
Finally upgraded my old Olight M21 this past week. It took a little bit of patience and a lot of steady muscling but I managed to get the head apart and remove the old SST-50. The hardest part really was getting into the head as Olight used a liberal amount of threadlock inside the bezel section to secure the reflector in place. Utilizing a heat gun I am sure helped loosen it just enough so that I could start rotating it without doing any damage to the exterior.
I also had to trim down the board that the donor XM-L was on as it was a bit too wide to fit under the insulating plastic cap which also serves to center the LED inside the head. Because of some excess of solder due to the fiddly nature of the wires and the low profile of the insulating cap, the XM-L does not sit as far inside the reflector as the SST-50 did and so does not reflect all of the light produced, but overall I am very pleased with the result. It's nice to have this little mod even though the original SST-50 still managed 300 lumens or so it now feels like the light it should have been. I'll try to get some pics uploaded later.
I also had to trim down the board that the donor XM-L was on as it was a bit too wide to fit under the insulating plastic cap which also serves to center the LED inside the head. Because of some excess of solder due to the fiddly nature of the wires and the low profile of the insulating cap, the XM-L does not sit as far inside the reflector as the SST-50 did and so does not reflect all of the light produced, but overall I am very pleased with the result. It's nice to have this little mod even though the original SST-50 still managed 300 lumens or so it now feels like the light it should have been. I'll try to get some pics uploaded later.
