The laser is about as pointless as the nf's, and the “flashlight” function is even more useless. Basically, its only real use is for cosmetics. This mod will add some functionality to it, and still keep the same clean look (without the grey slider), as well as make it easier to turn your maglite on and off by hooking it up to the switch provided.
What you'll need:
Recon flashlight
screwdriver
flashlight you will use (not pictured)
soldering iron
solder
a wire (I have two there; but you only need one, mine is 7'' long and works perfectly)
Very important is the decision of what to use for your flashlight. It must use only one AAA battery. It is also helpful if it is a LED bulb, because all of the circuitry are near the top, which is what we need. Look at photos below to see what I'm talking about. Also, you don't want to use some crappy flashlight for the obvious reasons; you want it to actually have a function.
First off, unscrew the case. Remember to unscrew the battery cover first. Once you're inside, unscrew the orange plate and take off that, the grey sliding thing, and the lens.
The grey piece will have an electronic board on it, with a red and black wire leading from it to the battery case. Cut the red wire as close as possible to the board, as you will need to still use this, but you can cut off all of the black wire and throw it away. Leave the little orange wire alone.
Now take apart your maglite. The only things you need are the small circuitboard and top. You need to make sure these two pieces are very firmly attached with something, I used hot glue. I think this circuit board only comes in LED flashlights, I don't know. Anyway, nest the top shell into the orange ring protruding from front of recon flashlight and hot glue that in.
(sorry for the blurriness, my camera kind of sucks)
Now, solder the red wire onto the + end of the circuitboard, this should be where the battery touches it in the casing. Now, solder a new wire to the metal plate at the BACK of the battery case and somehow secure the other end to the side of the maglite's top with solder.
(look to the right where it is attached)
Finished guts:
Put back inside case:
Now, all you have to do is close it back up very carefully. The AAA battery needs to be put in the left socket only, that is very important.
If you did everything right, you should be able to turn the light on and off using the switch on the side. If not, or if you get sporadic bursts of light, then something isn't firmly attached. Go back and make sure everything is connected properly. And if you choose to, you can tape up the side slits to keep wires from poking out or outside debris from getting in.
Congratulations! You've made a seemingly useless piece of plastic into a flashlight that turns on and off at the touch of a switch and can be put on the accessory rail of any nerf gun that has one! The flashlight I started with was pretty powerful, so this is now a formidable flashlight.
So there you go. If anything seems confusing about the pictures, it is because I did the mod before the writeup, so I couldn't show where everything exactly was before I modded it. Please feel free to tell me what you think, and ask any questions you have, I will try to answer all of them except “what exactly is that flashlight's model” or “where did you get that flashlight?” because I just don't know. Every other question is fine. And I enjoy being asked; I' d like to help as many people as possible with this.
Post write-up edit: After writing this up (before my account was even cleared at Nerfhaven), I saw a few other people put flashlights in this, most notably OberonFox. However, I do believe I'm the first to actually integrate it into the existing electronics, allowing you to turn it on and off by flicking the switch rather than twist the flashlight that is poking out, or whatever else you do. Please point it out if this is not the case.
Edit: Sorry if the pics are big, but I can't figure out how to resize them. I've done so in photobucket, but it doesn't seem to have affected anything.
Edited by Jabulus, 07 August 2008 - 08:24 PM.
