I've read a number of posts about LED lights and pros/cons...I had been playing with something recently and had one of those "why didn't I think of this before" moments. I had an LED toy go bad and figured I'd "examine it" I pulled the LED and noticed that (as most know) it was a bulb with 2 leads straight down.....just like the mag lite bulb..then it dawned on me that it just might work....so I took the mini mag apart and put the LED bulb in (it did take some firm pressure to get the bulb to seat in the contacts and it does have to be in the correct polarity position) (if it doesn't go on try reversing the LED)....but it worked great. If you want to have the reflector operable, then you'd need to do some work but I figured that if you had an extra reflector, you could open up the hole a bit for the LED bulb to fit through the hole and still have some light from it and retain the on/off feaure. Maybe not the greatest for EDC. If you have an "extra" LED bulb from scavaging..when batteries are low you'd have a good area light for those batteries that aren't good for anything else. Hope this helps someone.

I did that with an older camo mini-mag. I wanted a red light so I put a red LED in it. It isn't really bright, but for what i wanted it for it works great. If you want a brighter one there are a lot of good LED conversion pieces out there, I know they sell one at Dicks sporting goods that is pretty good.

I bought a couple Mag-Lite AA combo 3 white light LED conversion kits from Nite-Ize. It appears the threads are not the correct pitch on the screw on end caps. I couldn't get either switch to screw into the Mag-Lite bodies properly, but the LED bulbs work fine. Not very bright, but I don't anticipate changing blown bulbs as often as I once did. Should get much longer battery life now also? The combo kit usually sells for a buck more than just the bulb with reflector. Even with the screw on end cap, you still have to turn the bezel to activate the light. If I were to buy again, would only buy the bulb kit. Paul.

*nods* Plenty of ways to mod the minimag that aren't terribly intensive. We talked some about them a few weeks ago:

http://www.equipped.org/ubbthreads/showt...&fpart=

I did a search here a while back prior to purchasing Nite-Ize LEDs and came up with nothing. Thanks for posting the thread.

There are a zillion different LED conversions being sold commercially for the Minimag. The Opalec Newbeam is nice, giving you around 16 hours of flat regulated output from 3 leds. Higher powered Luxeon conversions are available from www.anlighten.com/shop which also sells the "MJLed", a machined down low voltage white 5mm led.

The simplest thing you can do is just enlarge the reflector hole to 1/8" (for a 3mm led) or 1/4" (for 5mm), replace the bulb with a led, and replace the batteries with Energizer Lithium L91 or Battery Station L-AA lithium AA's. The lithiums have slightly higher voltage (1.7V) than alkalines so they'll drive the LED at reasonable brightness, while having ridiculous runtime (200+ hours) and very long shelf life and cold weather performance. This is actually a reasonable plan for a cheap survival light.

Personally I wouldn't bother with Minimag conversions since there are lots of much nicer LED lights being made these days.

Thanks for the info. I agree on much nicer lights but between work and home I have a small collection of Mag-Lites.

Note that leds are diodes, which means they have polarity. If you replace the bulb with a led and it doesn't light, pull out the led and put it back in the other way. I was going to mention this earlier but forgot to.

A couple years ago, when Nichia LEDs were first coming out, I knobbed(Kluged) an LED conversion for a 3 D cell mag lite using 7 LEDs and some perf board, a machine screw and a couple nuts, some serious soldering, and some wire. I sold the thing to a guy for $50 and never made another. The writing was on the wall, and I wasn't in a production mode at the time.

It did work pretty good though. Reflectors don't mean much, the LED light is already focused at a pre-determined angle, with very little backscatter for the reflector, but what the heck, people like to crank the end I guess.

I picked up the Nite Ize unit this afternoon at REI. No tailcap, just the LED and reflector. Ya know, for 7 bucks, it turned the ol maglite into something worth having.

my apologies...I missed the thread on the conversion...didn't mean to repeat stuff....all I was saying though is if you happen to just have a single LED bulb, you could pull just a little more out of it in a last ditch situation.

It's normal. Just easier to point to an older thread than to have everyone repost thier contributions, that's all <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I just put in an LED Mini Mag conversion by Nite-Ize that I got from REI. It was easy to put in and it works good. I'm pleased and will get more for the remainder of the mini-mags that have been languishing around the house.

I just bought two of those Nite-ize conversions too. I put them in and was pretty impressed. One is going in my truck tool kit, the other is coming with me to college so i can lock up my Surefire(s), but loan that out when someone needs a light.

FYI - On my Nite-Ize led conversion, I had to grind the inside of the head housing a little with a Dremel to get the new reflector to seat fully. YMMV. Good light output and color though, and I'm looking forward to longer battery life. Can't beat the price, either.