Stinger HP 6V Mod Versus Various Mags

I have just recently been dabbling in some battery pack building and got to try some lights on loan from friends on CPF. The main event in this post is the 6V Stinger Mod. This has been documented several times on CPF and goes back to some work that Dano presented a while ago. I have just completed building some custom 6V packs for the normally 3.6V Stinger series and had the opportunity to test the results so here they are:

Player #1: Stinger HP. A Stinger body with an HP "High Performance" turbo head replacement for the standard bezel. This is a 3.6V nominal light that uses a bipin bulb fed by 3 x sub-C 1800mAh nicads. This unit was graciously loaned to me by Milkyspit to help me iron out some battery pack tolerance issues.

Player #2: Stinger HP 6V. This is a Stinger whose pack has been replaced by a 6V pack. These are 5 x 1/2SC 1300 mAh nicads. The temporary lamp assembly is a reflectored unit for an SL-20X on loan from S4MadMan. It obviously doesn't fit in the Stinger head. I just tweaked the pins a little bit and stuck it in the pin receivers inside the Stinger.

Player #3: Mag18. This is the tried and true combo of a Mag4C body, WA01318 bulb and 4xSF123+1AA llithium. Very bright and correlated to about 350 torch lumens.

Player #4: Mag83. This is a Mag2C with a WA01183 bulb powered by 4 x 1/2SC such as are in the 6V Stinger pack. It is very potent for it's size and this 3.85A bulb gets 18 minutes of runtime from the tiny cells.

This first picture is simply a comparison of the three light bodies. You can see that the Stinger is the most compact of the three. The tube was designed to fit the sub-C cells so is noticeably thinner than the Mag bodies built for full-Cs.


Here is the StingerSL20X.


And here are the beamshotz. Exposure is locked and all torches are freshly charged. You can see that the Stinger HP is nothing to write home about, even with the HP head. I'm a bit jaded but it's just yellow and dim. With the 6V pack and a 6V LA though, it's a very nice little package. It'll probably still get 45-60 minutes of runtime with the Ultrastinger LA and will be much brighter and whiter than stock. It's still not as white as the WA bulbs but it's quite bright.

The Mag18 shows the characteristic bilobe hotspot of the large filament but the Mag83 displays a very nice rounded hotspot due to the miniscule filament of the WA01183 bulb.


All in all, I'd have to say a 6V Stinger is a very satisfying mod. Bright, reasonable run time and can charge in the cradle. Plus, with these very potent little 1/2SC cells, you're ready to drop in the WA01111 or the insane WA01160. Can you imagine having the brightness of the brightest current MagCharger mod in a torch smaller than a Mag 2C? Uh, I can. Of course there's the issue of meltage of the stock plastic lens but I think that can be handled.

Wilkey

This post was restored on 12/21/06

Ginseng,

Thanks for the review. Nice write-up as usual. What do you think the run-time of the 6V Stinger w/ 1160 would be? 12 min.? 20 min? Their capacity is roughly half of the MC batteries, right? Or PS 1/2D NiCad's (2.5 AH). The one person who did this said it blew away everything else he owned, even his SF M6 w/ HOLA. Not sure why it would be any different than the MC WA1160 combo. Perhaps it isn't.

Anyway, thanks Wilkey.

Jim,

The runtime with the WA01160 would be about 20-22 minutes. The 1300's are 52% of the 2.5Ah 1/2D cells. The Stingers and new SL-20XP LED have light faceting near the center of the reflector. This smooths out the beam a bit without appearing to affect the throw. And, at least in the Stinger series, the light is focusable. Thus, you can adjust the tightness of the beam and it is not as diffuse as the SF texturized reflectors, two factors that affect the subjective judgement of light quality. The faceting also makes the beam subjectively smoother than that from the Mag reflector.

Wilkey

Ginseng,

As owner of both a Stinger (with small head and orange peel reflector) and the Stinger HP you tested above, I can honestly say that the stock Stinger HP is a bit of a disappointment. It's certainly no brighter than the small headed Stinger; the only difference seems to be a narrower hotspot, and even then it comes at the expense of more artifacts in the beam. With the 6V pack and an UltraStinger bulb, I'm hoping it can really distinguish itself from the regular Stinger.

I've gotta say, though, that the small headed Stinger with orange peel reflector and stock 3.6V battery pack rocks! Time and again I'm impressed with how much more throw that light packs into a genuinely compact package. Beam quality is perfect, and eerily SureFire-like, yet the Stinger is focusable for wider or narrower beam whenever needed. And it's not all that much larger than a typical 2x123 tactical light, yet its total output is so much greater. A genuine sleeper light around here on CPF! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinser2.gif

Thanks for the great analysis of four worthwhile hot wire lights. Very illuminating (yes, pun intended)! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yellowlaugh.gif

Question Wilkey, where did you get the 6 volt battery pack?
I carry 2 of the Stinger hps on duty and do not think they are as bright as they could be. Sl uses the same bulbs for both the stinger hp 3.6v and Ultra stinger 6v. I am willing to bet that they are drastically underdriving the Stinger hp bulb and the 6 volt battery pack would be just the ticket. I dont like the length of the Ultra stinger though.
The 5 sub cs wpould make it that length would ot not?

Ok,
I built the packs from 1/2 SC cells. This is a tight fit in the Stinger body and does not work with the XT tailcap. Are you sure it is the same bulb? My Stinger catalog lists the PN for the US as 78914 and the PN for the Stinger HP bulb as 78915. The bulb would not last long on that degree of underdrive. It would very quickly turn black and die.

Wilkey

I have unofficially christened this as the Mini-Ultra and listed it as such in my "Instant specs for 72 popular lights" It's a much more distinguished title than merely "Stinger HP mod". /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Brightnorm

[ QUOTE ]
brightnorm said:
I have unofficially christened this as the Mini-Ultra and listed it as such in my "Instant specs for 72 popular lights" It's a much more distinguished title than merely "Stinger HP mod". /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Brightnorm

[/ QUOTE ]

Hey Brightnorm, for newbie's you don't have a bookmarked link that you can post for those 72 pop. lights? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

[ QUOTE ]
Ginseng said:
Ok,
I built the packs from 1/2 SC cells. This is a tight fit in the Stinger body and does not work with the XT tailcap. Are you sure it is the same bulb? My Stinger catalog lists the PN for the US as 78914 and the PN for the Stinger HP bulb as 78915. The bulb would not last long on that degree of underdrive. It would very quickly turn black and die.

Wilkey

[/ QUOTE ]

OkieLEO,

for those who missed your other thread:
Stramlight stinger mod

For clarification, you have both HP and standard head SL Stingers? Your dept. only has standard head Stingers?

I don't have any of the Stingers so others will have to advise, but CPF member FiveMega has tested the Carley 1122 potted by Carely into a standard PR base, for use in a modified M*glite---he was looking for something a bit brighter than the Strion bulb. The 1122 is a T1.5 size bi-pin bulb, with a filament lenght(width) of approximately 1.7mm, something in between the width of the two Welch-Allyn bulbs in Ginseng's beamshots above. About the same diameter as the Stinger bulbs?, the 1122 is 3.5v/2.3a and rated for 140lumens- a little more than 50% brighter than a Stinger, or just enough to make it noticeably brighter than a Stinger bulb.

At 3.5v you get a very slight amount of overdrive as the batteries will run the bulb at more than 3.6v for a good part of the capacity of the batteries before they need recharging, but the lifespan will be less than the rated 50hrs for this bulb. It is also a Xenon filled Halogen bulb, so it will maintain near rated output/white color longer than a xenon bulb, which darkens much more as the bulb ages towards burning out. I believe Fivemega, may have a Strion; so you could try PM'ing him about the Carley 1122, not sure if he got any bare 1122's that he could check to see if they worked in the Strion, sorry- he's quite busy with other CPF projects right now. Never the less, the Carley 1122 will not have the blindingly bright output you seek; it will only be as about as bright as the standard M*gcharger light- which uses a 6v 10w bi-pin bulb rated at 175lumens. For blinding brightness you would need the 6v, high-current capable batterypack that Ginseng no longer builds, along with the high output bulbs. Though I suppose if you have the soldering skills, you might be able to make your own pack; but you'd have to ask Ginseng about that.

If it were my choice, I'd either have 2 Stingers, one a Stinger HP with 6v 1300ma pack & high output bulb, or a standard Stinger, with a replacment 3.6v NiMH SC batterypack I would build. GP makes an RC model battery that gives you 3300ma in the SC size; and run a Carley 1122 with that for a light that puts out as much brightness as a M*gChr, but has longer runtime than a stock M*gChr. Which is more important for you, having short runtime, small super bright light; or a light you can depend on to not run out of juice, when you need it the most??? That's why Mr Bulk, carries a high output, high performance (but expensive) LED's--dependability and longer useful runtime in a small package. LED's don't have bulbs that burn out, or filaments that break when the light gets dropped.

If this would work for you, there is a minimum total purchase order quantity of $50 for Carley bulbs. $6ea in quantities of 1-99.
http://www.carleylamps.com/halogen.asp

What Ginseng did not mention here is that SL has proprietary connections on their battery packs, such that you will not find an after-market battery supplier who would build you a higher performing/higher capacity battery pack. Ginseng did build some of these packs, but due to the difficulty in making them, he only offered a few of these for sale.

The correlation to Ginseng saying that a 6v bulb running off of a 3.6v pack would darken and die, is that a 3.6v bulb running off of a 6v pack would likely either instaflash or have an unacceptably short lifespan of hours, if not minutes. 6v is nominal voltage; after charging, a 1.2v NiMH or NiCd cell will be above 1.4 volts, so 5 x 1.4+ = 7+ volts. That's almost a 100% overdrive of a 3.6v bulb.

[ QUOTE ]
Ginseng said:
All in all, I'd have to say a 6V Stinger is a very satisfying mod. Bright, reasonable run time and can charge in the cradle. Plus, with these very potent little 1/2SC cells, you're ready to drop in the WA01111 or the insane WA01160. Can you imagine having the brightness of the brightest current MagCharger mod in a torch smaller than a Mag 2C? Uh, I can /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif Of course there's the issue of meltage of the stock plastic lens but I think that can be handled.

Wilkey

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Guess I won't mention that special batterypack again, last time I joked about Ginseng making them...someone became incensed /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif. But just curious, what ever happened to trying the WA1160 in this mod? I have a rather strange bulb in my hands, the Carley 852 Halogen. xenon filled 6v/3.33a 500lumens. Funny thing it is: T2.5 size, 8mm diameter, but heavier inner leads coming out of the bottom, have spot welded, thin T1.5 sized, 2mm spaced leads??? Don't know why they put such skinny current robbing/glowing? leads on this bulb; but I wonder how this would do in the Stinger mod or a M*gChr with the higher nominal running voltage, 4ah AeroNiMH pack? Filament lenght appears to be well over 2mm, but what if you could get it made in an axial arrangement?

Oh well, I don't have the time to test such theories; anyone else with more time on their hands?

No after I read your post I did a little more checking.
They have two bulbs a 3.7 volt 6watt and a 6 volt 10 watt.
Teach me to listen to the local police supplier.