Part 2: I ordered the lights from China and am waiting for them, but in the meanwhile, I have written this so I can upgrade the current lights I have.




I know many of you have lights like this, and maybe are thinking of buying new ones, but you can easily just upgrade the internals for very cheap.

Emitter and Driver Board

Opening the light up, the parts are quite simple. In this picture we see the driver board which regulates the current going to the light and the on/off switch.



This is the LED emitter on the other side.






The emitter and driver are really cheap and you can upgrade them to something new that may output a little more light than the current internals. Here are links to new emitter and driver.

http://usd.dx.com/product/cree-xm-l2-10w-700lm-8300k-white-light-led-emitter-for-flashlight-black-901260112#.U6ptpbFgEeJ

http://usd.dx.com/product/17mm-2800ma-5-mode-regulated-led-driver-circuit-board-for-flashlight-diy-dc-3-4-5v-901127684#.U6ptp7FgEeJ

Emitter: XM-L2 U3 Bin 3.7V


Driver Board: 3-4.5V 2800mA



You can easily remove the old emitter and driver and solder in new ones. These parts will total you about $12 plus shipping.

With a XM-L2 U3 emitter and 2800mA driver board, you should get over 1000 lumens out of the emitter.

Battery

Many people don't like the cheap batteries that come with the lights and many people have old batteries that are dead and want to replace them. The best batteries you can get for your lights are 18650 Panasonic batteries.



Buy four of these and then get a pack.

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Rechargeable-Waterproof-2-x-18650-4-x-18650-Battery-Box-for-Bike-Light/708513_1628382152.html

Depending on how many volts you need for the driver and emitter, you will have to setup your battery pack properly.


The panasonic batteries are 3.7V, the emitter and driver are both 3.7V, so for the above upgrade you will have to do a Parallel Circuit.













To be continued... Part 3 will be a review of the lights once I receive them.

Nicely done again
I think there are different lenses available also, eh?

_________________
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Fear the Yeti
"Go ride your bike today, don't let the old man in.."

Mike

Yes, you can buy different lenses, different reflector, or any other part.
If someone has a three emitter light, they can buy a different driver board for that.
Pretty much any part we need, we can buy.

Here are a few suggestions. Be careful where you buy panasonic batteries. They are probably fakes or rejects from the factory. You are probably better off just buying cheap protected cells. They have a pcb that has uv/ov protection as well as overcurrent protection. I have personally tested these and they work. Even with nicer cells, if you are not balance charging, you can still burn up batteries. Esr tolerances can be large on questionable source batteries.

To get more light output and life, hand lap the heatsink surface with a fine grit sandpaper till it is shiny and flat. Then get some arctic silver thermal paste. Use very little. You want only to fill in microscopic imperfections in the heatsink. This will greatly increase thermal transfer and lower junction temps.

Any suggestions on where to buy the batts to make a battery pack with charge protection?

Dealextreme