My TD01c lives!!

After my endeavor to figure out why the TD01c lacks lumens, I fried the driver. So I had to get a new one. Man is this thing awesome!

Unfortunately, I could not find a 26mm driver to seat perfectly on the shelf inside the head so I had to get creative. I took a 3mm thick aluminum sheet, cut a 20.5 ish hole in the center and then used my Dremel as a router to make a 1.5mm shelf at 22mm for the driver to seat. Driver fits so perfectly.

This is a mod basically anyone could do to get more beans out of theirs. To remove the driver, unscrew the bezel, cut the wires to the led (or desolder them), shove the wires inside the head and then insert 2 alen keys into the holes and press as hard as you can. It will come out when you least expect it. Just buy the 8 amp 22mm driver and make a ring and bam, you got a brighter light!

To emphasize how much better it is with the 8 amp driver, with the stock driver, it could barely push past 1200 lumens. Now it makes almost as many lumens as my M21c with an SFT42 and a 10 amp driver even with the TIR loosing quite a bit of light. This comes out to around 2100 lumens or slightly more. It also manages to out throw the M21c with a hotspot 2x the size. At 50 yards, the hotspot on the TD01c is the same size as the corona of the M21c only brighter. I think my M21c is now obsolete.

One trade off with this new power is heat. It gets hot and fast. Almost immediately after turning on the light, it starts getting warm. It does make for a good hand warmer though. The only advantage the M21c has at this point is it can go much longer before getting warm.

2 minor inconveniences with the added height is 1) the oring does not seat very deep in the head which could make it less waterproof, and 2) the extra length of the spring on the driver makes the battery stick out a lot more than it used to. This causes the springs on both the driver and the tail switch to get squashed to their absolute maximum. For extra drop protection, I will probably run it with an 18650 sleeve and a high drain 18650.

If you have any questions about trying this yourself or what grease I use, I will be happy to help!

Happy Valentines day to those who have a life other than flashlights!