Maglite for the car glove compartment

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Jack B. said:
I've had 2 -3cell Maglites since I can remember. Besides being a flashlight I always thought they made great weapons. Has anyone done the upgrade to LED and does it work? Are they brighter?
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A few years ago I upgraded a number of our "family" D-cell Maglites with drop-in LED units. They are a bit brighter and they are noticeably easier on the batteries.
 
dh1633pm said:
I keep two flashlights in the truck. A led spot light that has a nice low setting and an led flashlight. The problem is batteries. When it gets cold in the winter, the batteries don't keep their charge so well.
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Alkaline batteries and most rechargeable battery chemistries suffer from a pretty significant voltage drop when it gets to freezing and lower. Lithium primary (non-rechargeable) batteries are the way to go when dealing with prolonged cold.
 
A big heavy object the length of a 2d-6d maglight is better for cracking the skull of someone who isn't aware it's coming. I wouldn't recommend squaring off and then trying to use one. Your going to swing rather slowly, get evaded or at best deflected, then your getting stabbed, shot, or k.o.ed because the swing left you wide open trying to recover. Swing a pool noodle at a 5 year old and they will instinctively protect their head, what do you think a grown-a## career bad guy is going to do? In an sd situation I'd take a knife or my hands over a heavy light.

And for a light they are no longer the better choice, or even a good choice. I'm surprised they are in business at all.

A lithium d-size battery is 10 dollars, best ive found. So 30 for a light and 20 for batteries (2d) .... you should have bought a better light for the 50 dollars.
 
You might be surprised (then again, maybe not) at just how fast and handy a C-cell Kel-lite or Maglite can be, especially in the hands of someone who knows how to use it.

In the 70s, I am convinced that the mere presence of my old 7C Kel-lite in my hand helped me to avoid active altercations on a number of occasions ... and also once when I actually got jumped by a miscreant one dark night leaving work at ~3am.

O'course, I have never had to worry about cold limiting the batteries' capacity (most recently NiMH) because historically I have always carried my light with me.
 
Many years ago a Maglite rolled out from under a car passing by where I worked. With no way to find the owner I kept it. Its a 4 cell. I keep it in the drawer of my night stand. I've found that newer LED which are brighter, smaller and sometimes free little flashlights work better for me but the OP is right a 4 cell Maglite makes one hell of a club.

maglite-led-4cell-d-3166-640-1.jpg
 
My father kept a D cell (4 or 5D?) Maglite in his sock drawer for ages when I was growing up. It was considered THE flashlight of the house. Power goes out, grab that light. As I got older I learned lights were getting smaller and better than Maglite was putting out. My only Maglite was a 2AA with LED upgrade that served as my backup EDC light when my brighter and better lights were somewhere else. Even with LED upgrades, D and C cells are being carried my fewer stores these days. A better flashlight/emergency club would be a Streamlight Stinger or something similar.
 
I'm glad I came across this thread. I have a rarely-used 3D that has been sitting in a drawer for a good little while. Reading this inspired me to check and change the batteries. It is an old non-LED model.

I am also probably going to get a modern full-sized LED version or two in the near future.



I have a small 2AA LED Mini-Maglite that has been my go-to flashlight for at least 10 years. Very handy. Not as effective as a self-defense instrument as the bigger lights obviously, but still at least as effective as a basic kubotan as someone has mentioned.
 
In terms of striking with 3 D-cell maglites, I would feel more comfortable gripping the flashlight in a horizontal position with both hands. I wouldn't have as much range, but that method has more of an ergonomic feel to me.
 
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The C cell LED's are a bargain right now. You can get them for about 16 bucks each from eBay if your order two. The programmable switch is a nice feature. The lumens is much higher than the old incandescent models were.
 
Yeah, the red, silver l, and blue ones are a good bit higher. I wanted a blue one a couple of years ago and it took quite a bit of shopping to get a deal on one.

I recently ordered two black ML50L 3 C cell ones. They were just a little under 31 bucks shipped.
 
A 3D vigorously applied to the collarbone of an aggressor once got me out of a very bad scene. I have them distributed hither and yon throughout my gear.
 
I keep one in each vehicle, but I prefer better access than the glove compartment. If I am attacked in my vehicle, it is an option but it isn't the first thing I will be trying to get. I did use one once to "open" a window in order to free the occupant from a pickup that rolled onto its side.
 
tubeshooter said:
.I have a rarely-used 3D that has been sitting in a drawer for a good little while. Reading this inspired me to check and change the batteries. It is an old non-LED model.

I am also probably going to get a modern full-sized LED version or two in the near future.
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They sell LED conversion units that fit the old models, they work well.

As far as being hard to hold, I found holding it on the lens side worked better, it prevented it from slipping from your hand. Also you didn't take a chance of damaging the lens area if need arose to strike something.
 
I used to swear by Maglites, but went the route of high lumens AA and A123 LED lights these days, as glove boxes and consoles have shrunk. That said, and after reading this thread, I may go back to one or two in the vehicles that have room for a larger light. May try a C and D model...time to research...

I have a pretty cool Maglite story for y'all. I grew up in small town NH. One winter night during my senior year of HS (1979-1980), we had knee deep snow by 2100 (09:00 PM) (started snowing that morning IIRC) and we were in the middle of a helluva Nor'East'r that had most non 4X4 traffic off the road and the plows were struggling to keep up. I drove a '76 Jeep Cherokee that had limited slip axles, inline 6 banger, a three speed manual, and tall skinny snow tires that would go pretty much anywhere in snow. I was on my way home from my after school job at a grocery store and on snowy nights, I'd make it a point to cruise through Main Street just to see if anything was going on in our town of 5,000 folks.

I was gassing up my Jeep when a snowmobile went screaming up the empty street past a parked police cruiser. The cop had no chance to catch the guy, so not much reaction happened. About 20-30 seconds later, the snowmobile turns around and hauls ass back down the street again, basically taunting the cop to chase him. This time, the cop hits his lights, gets out of the car, and tries to wave the guy down...to no avail. I'm done pumping my gas but this show is kinda fun, so I just hang tight to see if it will keep going. The guy on the snow mobile doesn't disappoint, and is soon screaming back up the road for a third pass by the cop. This time, the cop, obviously PO'ed, rears back and throws his maglite at the rider. The throw goes low, missing the rider but somehow lodges itself into the snowmachine track, jamming it immediately. The cop takes off at a run and tackled the rider, who was trying to run off but i'm pretty sure the guy had been drinking or something, because he didn't make it very far. Never found out how that one ended, but he was in handcuffs and being stuffed into teh cruisere when I left. Since things were much simpler then, I suspect the dude probably ended up sleeping it off in jail that night and may have got off with a simple traffic violation.

The whole thing probably took a couple minutes to unfold, but I still remember it like it was last night, and it was the reason I swapped out by big red Everready Lantern for my first Maglite soon after.
 
ugaarguy said:
Gotta disagree with you there. Those zoom mechanisms suck water and dust in, and the optics rob a ton of light vs a conventional lens or TIR optic.
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Very happy with mine, I bought 6 and gave them as Christmas presents. I got mine wet, maybe if dropped under water and zoomed is bad, otherwise the zoom feature is super and this is a very bright light .For the money it is super and c cells last a long time and are cheap. I was a Surefire fan boy for years and have a lot of them along with Streamlights. While the new LED Maglights are better than ever , they don't perform like that Cheap Duracell 1000 IMHO. I also bought the Dura Cell 1500s for business presents but don't like them.Too plasticky
 
I got one of those Duracell lights in a random gift exchange this year. Light output is FAR better than my 2D incandescent maglite. (I know, comparing apples to oranges) and it's heavier, too. However, it's plastic, and I wonder if it would survive being used as a hammer
 
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