Sorry for the delay, but as promised here is my conversion write up for getting these old 4-in-1 lights looking and working like they did in the movie, but without the extra weight of six D-Cell batteries and a bunch of lights that are prone to burning out.
(Sorry mobile users...)
Here is what you will need to knock this out:
[Necessary to Convert Lights]
"Truck Tuff" 8 Inch Light Bar - White (CA 23830)
1/2 inch Pex Pipe (Less than a foot)
High-gloss clear coat
Aluminum Tape
9.6V 1600mAh “Nunchaku Style” airsoft battery and charger
Male mini Tamiya connector (I got one attached to bullet connectors so I didn’t have to pin it out myself)
Toggle / rocker switch (any will do that can handle 12v, probably find a smaller one than what I used)
Warm 9v LED Bulbs
Barrel connectors
[Optional]
Humbrol Bess Brown (…or be cheap and lazy like me and get CrossLink Paints to mix you up some RAL 7013)
1” Black nylon military webbing (you’ll need less than one yard)
Snap button kit (This will usually come with more snaps than you’ll use in your lifetime)
Salon Care 40 Volume Developing Creme (you only need this if you need to restore the reflector behind the CFL bulb)
Barrel connectors
[Tools and Extra Bits]
Soldering iron, solder, wire, heat-shrink, wire strippers, spools of wire (lots of basic electronics stuff)
Phillip’s screwdriver
Forceps and hemostats help, if you solder you’ve probably have those on hand
I used a single 9v battery for testing, but this wasn’t necessary
You can bust out the voltmeter if you want to do things by the book, but we’re going to be making a very simple circuit so you probably won’t require it
Painter’s tape for the painting…
First we have to tear it apart… really carefully. Remember this has some brittle plastic on it, most of the lights you’ll find have nicks, dings, and chips taken out of them already, making it easy to break them even more.
The ends disconnect with a barrel lock mechanism, so push in a bit and twist, and hope you don’t break the plastic connector.
The lenses should slide out easily once the end caps are off. (Slide the big clear lens down for it to come out easily)
Most of the rest of the body is tab connected. Put a little pressure on the walls from inside the battery cavity and the control and CFL plate should come off.
Remove and or de-solder the leads powering the CFL.
Remove the single screw from the top of the light.
The inverter and circuit board is going to be yanked completely. This is connected to the top lightbulb holder by two struts. To pull this unit out you need to pull on the battery leads below the circuit board. It’s held in place by spring tension. If you bend away the light holder and circuit board should all slide out towards you.
It’s hard to describe the push-pull retention system they’re using but you can see in the picture below the little spring ears that were keeping the board from coming out.
Remove the screws from the board and de-solder the connected the circuit board that go back to the control switch. As a note, I have converted two of these and the wire colors were completely different.
The only wires still connected to the board are the leads that went to the CFL holder.
You should be left with the control panel and the mount for the torch at the top.
On my unit across the top the wires do the following:
Yellow = Ground
Black = Positive
Green = Power for torch
White = Power for the CFL
Red = Power for the yellow light (blinking)
(There is an extra wire that was used to run the blink circuit. I wasn’t smart enough to pull the components from the board and recreate the blink feature so I just de-soldered the second wire)
This is the light bar that will replace the CFL. That big threatening “DO NOT REMOVE” box is crucial to this unit working effectively as it’s a voltage regulator for that light. All that said we will be removing it temporarily at least.
This is where identifying ground is going to be important. The majority of the wires that were soldered to the circuit board were ground wires. With the exception of two, the power wire for the CFL (in my case white) and the wire that completed the blink circuit (which I removed).
You’ll want to tie all of your ground cables together; this includes the new ground wire that goes to the input side of the voltage regulator (Warning Box).
I soldered up the power CFL lead (white) to the positive lead on the voltage regulator at this time.
As you can see here my wirework skills are amateur at best, but the solder joint is solid so that’s all that matters.
The next thing I did was solder up my power lead. Now I added a barrel connector because I didn’t have the rechargeable batteries at the time, and I was using a regular 9v battery for testing the new circuits. You can choose to solder the male mini Tamiya connector and that will save you some space when you put everything back together.
The positive lead that goes to the switch is tiny and black, which makes my OCD scream, but my laziness overpowers it and I just go with the original wires instead of running new.
This is the crazy ground lead, please don’t judge my sub-pare soldering skills. I swear these joints hold.
All tidied up, now for a function check. Pop some bulbs back in, find a 9v battery and hope for no magic smoke.
These oversized wires are what’s giving you the movie function. You wire a lead to the torch and to the CLF then connect those to a toggle / rocker switch. When the switch is “on” both the CFL (now LED) and the torch (different LED) get power. When the switch is off you can select them independently.
I put blade connectors on the ends of these wires but you can solder them directly to the switch.
These wires are too big and this switch is too big, but it’s more than enough to hand 12v and it’s what I could find around the house.
If your CFL reflector doesn’t look like this or you don’t care that it looks like this go ahead and ignore some rambling about restoring vintage computers and install your LED bar.
While I was planning to make this the “weathered” version of the utility light, I didn’t quite care for how yellow that reflector had gotten. I knew there was a process for de-aging plastic like this and I figured I would give it a shot.
What you do is cover the affected area in Salon Care volume 40 (which can be acquired at salon / barber supply stores), then wrap it in cellophane and set it out in the sun or under a very powerful UV light.
The developer creme has a high concentration of hydrogen peroxide, the cling-wrap keeps the creme from evaporating, and the sun is the catalyst for the de-aging chemical reaction.
This was discovered in 2008 by some folks looking to restore vintage computers and it works great. They coined the name for the compound as Retrobright (Retr0bright). There’s a whole community that shows you how to make it yourself or find products that achieve the same effect at a low cost (like Salon Care 40 Volume)
It’s really interesting and the results are really great.
Now that it looks great lets’ mount that LED bar. The wires slip easily through the existing holes I just needed to add a little more double sided mounting tape to overcome the little ledge at each end.
Trim the wires and solder the LED bar back to the voltage regulator.
Before you paint you’ll need to pull the switch section apart. The rotary switch is held in by the top and bottom screws on the switch board. The center screw holds the rotary knob to the switch board. There is a connection plate (oblong metal piece with contact points at the top and bottom, a ball bearing (you can see this poking through the switch board, and a spring that sits under the ball bearing. Obviously you need all of these and the are of course really easy to lose.
Tape and paint! I did about three layers of Faux Bess Brown, and two layers of matte clear coat.
I’ve been putting the stripe of Bess Brown on the bottom of the red lens. I’ve seen stills where this was painted in and I’ve seen others where it wasn’t. My guess is that they had about 50 of these lights in different states of broken and they were replacing parts as they went.
I painted a matte black stripe on the back to keep light from leaking through the front. I was going to measure this stripe but I realized you can just count the squares. I’m not 100% sure that’s the right height, in fact I’m pretty sure I’m one row of too high.
Let’s start putting this thing back together.
You’ll need to create a lens for the led light bar so it looks like and old CFL. I did this by taking 1/2 inch PEX Pipe (the new fancy flexible water pipes) and cutting it to size. The length of the gap between the two lugs on the reflector is just over 8 1/4 inches so that’s what I cut the pipe to, it ends up being a little longer than the old CFL that was in there.
After cutting it to length you’ll want to use a rotary tool to cut a channel for the LED bar to slide into. I cut this so it would have a snug friction fit around the LED housing.
After cutting it and test fitting it against the led bar and the reflector lugs I sanded any imperfections down and hit it with several coats of high-gloss clear coat. This gives it a glass tube look, finish selling it as a CFL bulb by wrapping the ends in aluminum tape.
Fit everything together and profit…
Reassemble the rotary switch, this bit Is the worst…
That is the rotary switch assembly apart with the dial sitting in the front panel.
First you have drop the tiny spring into the round lug on the back of the switch. (forceps for the win)
Then you have to balance the tiny ball bearing on top of the spring in the plastic lug.
Once that magic trick is performed you have to push the switch board down onto the knob, spring, ball bearing sandwich, place the connection plate down into the slot that protrudes from the selector knob and fasten the whole contraption together with a screw. The whole process on the surface seems simple but the rounded face and the lack of room underneath the board make it a bit difficult. (it’s okay to curse a lot during this, I won’t judge.)
Once the switch components are snung replace the two screws at the top and bottom of the switch unit.
I used a zip tie with a screw lug to attach the voltage regulator to the top torch mount.
Slide the top torch mount back into place and replace the securing screw.
Carefully fit the panels back onto their respective sides and do your best to cable manage as you go.
Function test time. The LEDs are a little dim here because I’m still using a regular 9v)
I created an adapter to go from the mini Tamiya to a barrel connector, but obviously you don’t have to do this if you are only using the mini Tamiyas.
Squish. You won’t be this crowded if you found a smaller switch and didn’t use a barrel connector. Also I added some HVAC line-set foam to the top and around the battery cavity to keep the airsoft batteries from bouncing around.
Sometimes the straps on these guys get lost, mine both had one but I wanted something a little sturdier. So I used some military nylon webbing. The total length of the strap is 33 3/4” the center of the first hole is about ¾ from end of the strap the second hole’s center is 2 ¼ from the first hole and the third hole is 14” from the end of the strap. The fourth and fifth holes are the same distance from far end as the first and second holes are. (After re-reading that I’m just as confused as you.)
Hopefully the overhead picture helps make sense of it. Use your snap button kit per its instructions and follow the pattern from the picture for correct button placement.
Female button upside-down, male button right-side-up, male button upside-down, male button right-side-up and female button upside-down.
Replace the endcap and the strap and you’re ready for a bug hunt.
I’m sure I missed something, like unscrewing the bulbs, and I wished I got better pictures of the switch assembly, but that pretty much covers how I did my conversion.
I don’t know how long the battery lasts, I know I’ve been using my first one on and off for a month now (running in movie mode) and it’s just starting to need a charge.
Anyway I hope this helps anyone looking to get one of these updated and easy to carry around at an event.
Best!
