Has anyone put a Lux III in a L4 Head

Just woundering what the beam of a L4 would look like with a Lux III . What bias does the L4 run ?
Thanks .

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Kenny

mountain,
I did quite a few conversions but changed out the driver as well. I did try the stock driver on a Lux III assuming that say on 1x123 that it would boost the LED to the 720 mA or whatever it is. Unfortunately, no joy. Since I know enough to identify a PCB but that's about it, I have no idea if the stock driver can be modified to run a LuxIII. The LuxIII in the KL4 reflector is real nice, IMHO.

Real nice in a L2 bezel also.

Those McL4 marvels with R2H Luxeons in them .... so sweet!
bernhard

I've done quite a few KL4 mods as well and a number of them were using the stock driver. Since the stock driver is a boost circuit, the general rules of boost circuits apply to the stock converter too. The Vin cannot exceed the Vf of the luxeons. By Vin, I mean actual battery voltage after sag under load. What this means is this, and this applies to the KL4 circuit only. Not boost circuits in general.

Without any modification, the circuit will deliver about 350mA to the lux III on a single 123. If you drive it with a Pila or other li-ion cell, then it will deliver the full 660mA to the luxeon III. The board uses a .33 ohm resistor as a current sense. If you run a 1 ohm resistor in parallel with this, you'll get about 500mA to the lux on a single 123 and about 1A on a li-ion cell.

Just swapping the emitter is the easiest way to mod the KL4. It runs fine as long as you don't try to feed it with 2X123, which will smoke it.

The best way to do it is to replace the stock converter with a Wiz2. That way it'll run on 1 or 2 cells, but it's much more difficult. The way I did it was to fabricate a replacement circuit housing, but I haven't done it in so long that I don't remember what I did with that drawing with the dimensions.

Thanks for the info . Im going to open one up and see if I can build a housing for a Wiz2 and swap the emitter .
One ouestion about the beam , is it still a full flood like the stock beam or does it throw a little farther with a Lux III ?
Thanks

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Kenny

mountain- The KL4 has better throw with the replaced emitter. It's a very useful beam IMO. Not as far throwing as the PR-T (obviously) but good throw with a nice big hotspot suited for broad illumination.

I have one of these McGizmo built KL4s with a BB600 and an R2H, and it is indeed sweet. It's also for sale if you're interested. Send me a PM for details.

Peter

My vote is stock driver and Li-Ion but you need to weigh the pros and cons of going pure Li-Ion. For my needs, Li-Ion pros outweigh the cons (I have other lights that can take 2x123's). Using the wizard will allow you to use either 2x123 or 1 or 2 Li-Ions but at less efficiency and more cost/complexity. Just doing the LED swap is easy so you may want to try the Li-Ion route and if it doesn't work out, it's easily reversible.

If you use a Wiz2, just remember that max Vin is 6v. So, either ONE li-ion or a pair of 123's.

Ah, good point there. The old Wiz could take two Li-Ions but the Wiz2 is limited to 6V.