Quick and Easy Mag light Upgrade.

[zeppe807]

Well I have about 8 3D Mag lights running around my house, truck, and tool boxes, not to mention many 2AA, and a couple 4D lights. I also have outfitted my dad over the years with many of these too.

So my question is what are my options to upgrade these to. I want to be able to drop in a good LED and get some good light out of it. I was hoping for any easy drop in type of an upgrade.

I was looking at the "TerraLUX TLE-6EX MiniStar5 SSC P4 U bin LED upgrade for 3-6 C/D cell Maglites" at:
http://www.batteryjunction.com/tle-6k2.html

and was wondering if that would be a good start.

I was also looking at a few forums that have some upgrades, but I don't have time to take apart my mags and do a bunch of soldering.

Thanks for the help.

[stumo]

The TerraLUX is a good upgrade.

Some useful resources are:

www.flashlightreviews.com and

www.candlepowerforums.com

stumo

[texas 48]

Originally posted by zeppe807
Well I have about 8 3D Mag lights running around my house, truck, and tool boxes, not to mention many 2AA, and a couple 4D lights. I also have outfitted my dad over the years with many of these too.

So my question is what are my options to upgrade these to. I want to be able to drop in a good LED and get some good light out of it. I was hoping for any easy drop in type of an upgrade.

I was looking at the "TerraLUX TLE-6EX MiniStar5 SSC P4 U bin LED upgrade for 3-6 C/D cell Maglites" at:
http://www.batteryjunction.com/tle-6k2.html

and was wondering if that would be a good start.

I was also looking at a few forums that have some upgrades, but I don't have time to take apart my mags and do a bunch of soldering.

Thanks for the help.
I saw the Mag light LED upgrades @ Home Depot but very expensive. More than $15.00. Sam's has a pair of Milled aluminum LED Flashlights for about 30.00 using 3 AAA batteries. 3 lumens. I have not seen the output for the maglights but I would assume they are good.

[zeppe807]

Well as an update, I did end up buying the "TerraLUX TLE-6EX MiniStar5 SSC P4 U bin LED upgrade for 3-6 C/D cell Maglites" and am happy with the results. The light is brighter and is more uniform, unlike the standard beam of the Maglite. It also has a really good throw to it even compared to the Maglite.

I would have like to see more light from it for the price, but I am still impressed with it, and will buy more down the road.

[chevrofreak]

Maglites have no thermal path from the bulb holder to the body, so there is really nowhere for the heat from the LED to go. If they drive them very hard the LED wouldn't last very long. As it is, it may not. There have been a lot of Seoul P4 problems reported over on candlepowerforums.com

The Maglite brand dropin uses a thermistor to decrease drive current as the LED heats up. That can actually cost as much as 60% of the light output just due to thermal throttling.

In my 3D Maglite with the head removed so it would fit into my integrating sphere I actually read just over 80 lumens. Figure a typical loss of 40% output as it heats up, and a 35% loss of light from the reflector and window and it is putting out about 31 lumens when it gets warmed up. About 52 when cold.

Newbie over on CPF (he is now banned for stupid reasons) has been testing several of the Terralux products and has uncovered several design and manufacturing flaws. I'll point him here to see if he wants to bring in any more info.

[texas_rifle]

this is what I use for my 3 and 6 cell mag lites

http://www.niteize.com/productdetail.php?category_id=28&product_id=127

only like 8 or 9 bucks at walmart

[RyanNREMTP]

Originally posted by texas_rifle
this is what I use for my 3 and 6 cell mag lites

http://www.niteize.com/productdetail.php?category_id=28&product_id=127

only like 8 or 9 bucks at walmart

I only use that brand for the mini-mags. They're great since they also come with a push button feature to install. These items are easy to install, only takes minutes.

I have the mag-lite LED replacement bulb for my 4 cell and love. I've tried the niteize one also and it is no where near as bright. Cheaper yes, but better no.

[Jarhead_USMC]

As far as the MagLED, as it's module heats up, the output is going to drop, and your eyes should adjust. MagLite was wise enough to put thermal limiting in their design, and use an LED like the Luxeon/CREE/OSRAM which has been designed and constructed to deal with heat- in their case, they used the Luxeon.

The new TerraLUX modules have a number of issues. The circuitry is not very efficient, causing extra heat to be generated. The LED is driven hard, causing significant heat. The thermal transfer is also poor, but there is no thermal limiting. The LED inside is much more thermally sensitive then the others, using a Seoul P4, which has a number of it's own issues. It also dims due to heat, but picks up the additional characteristics of the the Seoul P4, where a significant number of them will shift color towards blue, which is caused by the design Seoul implemented in the LED- some of them CPF'ers have had turn quite blue. The phosphor used in the Seoul deteriorates initially, quite rapidly, and will shift towards blue permanently, and has this rapid 12% drop in output with time, rather quickly, but it appears to level out. Due to the module getting hotter than what is needed to turn water into steam, the electronics had issues during testing and burned up on two of them, the epoxy that holds the LED to the heatsink on two new modules failed, and it abuses the LED well beyond maximums stated on the datasheet.

The new TerraLUX modules just fine if you only need short bursts of light. I'd definitely steer away from it for any serious use, especially if you need to count on it.

I had a number of failures of the TerraLUX modules during my testing. Hopefully TerraLUX will go back and fix their new design, and introduce new devices. However, if you just need short bursts, and you don't need to count on the light, it is just fine.

If you need something to work, I'd most definitely have to choose the MagLED. The MagLED is far from an optimal solution, but doesn't suffer from the multitude of shortcommings that the new TerraLUX do.

Most my pages have lots of photos/documentation, so they will take some time to load, be patient- go grab some water, make a head call or whatever.

TerraLUX testing:
http://www.molalla.net/~leeper/tle6exb.htm
http://www.molalla.net/~leeper/terralux.htm

MagLED testing:
http://www.molalla.net/~leeper/magrev.htm

Craftsman/Sears LED drop-in testing, where it also blew up like the TerraLUX:
http://www.molalla.net/~leeper/Sears%20Craftsman%20PR%20dropin.htm

Charts on the Seoul degrading with time at the end of the page, as well as other information showing various problems with the Seoul P4 LED:
http://www.molalla.net/~leeper/seoulmy.htm

[chevrofreak]

Thanks for posting that info here :)

[Jarhead_USMC]

No problem, any time.

[AJ Dual]

There are other things you can do, like get a replacement solid aluminum machined reflector, and a borofloat glass AR coated glass lens. The Aluminum will provide extra heat draw, the AR glass lens will cut heat down a few degrees through enhanced trasmisivity, and the real glass also provides a bit more thermal mass to soak up heat and transfer it to the aluminum body of the bezel a wee bit better than the polycarbonate lens would..

Although, at that point, you're just better off buying a dedicated LED light that can make use of proper heat sinking and thermal path to the body tube. It'll take up less space and weight.

I've been considering doing a two-cell conversion LED drop-in to a six cell mag, and making a lightweight four cell dummy spacer, and putting the two real cells at the end to concentrate the weight there. But that would just be an excuse to keep the flashlight functional as cover to keep the light as a club in the car.

[Jarhead_USMC]

It would be cool to see someone come up with a replacement switch assembly, made from metal, that would heatsink these drop-ins properly. Change out would be quite simple, just one setscrew to loosen, swap, and tighten.