wasBlinded
Flashlight Enthusiast
Recently I obtained a U2 for a very good price that not surprisingly turned out to be an abysmal performer. The tint of the LuxV was yellowish, which was fine with me, but the 1 meter lux measurement was a measly 1180, compared to two other U2s I have access to which measured 1600 and 1900, while there are reports from others whose U2s measure 2100 and almost 2400 lux.
Having an exceptionally craptacular U2 in hand, I had a choice of sending it to Surefire and asking to be made good (probably the smartest move) or putting in a WX1T emitter of which I have a couple of samples. The second option was just too interesting to resist. The biggest hurdle was opening the bezel, since there have been reports of people destroying U2s in the process, but one "chucky" fellow managed to do it without ill effect, so I followed his lead. See his thread here: U2 bezel removal
I used strips from a mountain bike tire tube, and wrapped the two parts of the bezel with that rubber, putting one end in a vise, and grabbing the other with a vise-grip. This worked well, and did not require an exceptional amount of torque.
Removing the emitter from the heatsing was not too difficult. I wicked away as much solder as I could, and lifted the leads. Prying the LED up destroyed it, and I was left with the slug sticking up. I heated the slug up with the 125 watt soldering gun, and was able to remove it from the heat sink with a needle nose plier. The rest was pretty routine. I scraped the remaining thermal epoxy from the heat sink with an exacto knife, then put a new dab of thermal epoxy down, fitted the WX1T emitter, soldered the leads, and reassembled the light.
Everything works well now. The lux measurement with the WX1T is 1480, which is a big improvement but still below the other U2's I've measured, and implies that U2s measuring near and above 2000 almost certainly have X bin LuxVs.
Sorry I don't have any pictures, but I thought people would be interested to know that replacement of the U2 LED isn't terribly difficult.
Having an exceptionally craptacular U2 in hand, I had a choice of sending it to Surefire and asking to be made good (probably the smartest move) or putting in a WX1T emitter of which I have a couple of samples. The second option was just too interesting to resist. The biggest hurdle was opening the bezel, since there have been reports of people destroying U2s in the process, but one "chucky" fellow managed to do it without ill effect, so I followed his lead. See his thread here: U2 bezel removal
I used strips from a mountain bike tire tube, and wrapped the two parts of the bezel with that rubber, putting one end in a vise, and grabbing the other with a vise-grip. This worked well, and did not require an exceptional amount of torque.
Removing the emitter from the heatsing was not too difficult. I wicked away as much solder as I could, and lifted the leads. Prying the LED up destroyed it, and I was left with the slug sticking up. I heated the slug up with the 125 watt soldering gun, and was able to remove it from the heat sink with a needle nose plier. The rest was pretty routine. I scraped the remaining thermal epoxy from the heat sink with an exacto knife, then put a new dab of thermal epoxy down, fitted the WX1T emitter, soldered the leads, and reassembled the light.
Everything works well now. The lux measurement with the WX1T is 1480, which is a big improvement but still below the other U2's I've measured, and implies that U2s measuring near and above 2000 almost certainly have X bin LuxVs.
Sorry I don't have any pictures, but I thought people would be interested to know that replacement of the U2 LED isn't terribly difficult.