2003 MR Master Replicas Darth Vader Conversion Complete (Alt Method)

Since I had this light saber hanging around, I decided to try to tackle this. As the other two posts on this have shown, this is fairly involved. At first it seems like there isn't enough room to fit everything, so you need to get creative.

The parts I used were the Conversion kit are:

1 of: MR or Hasbro FX Vader conversion kit
1 of: Deep Red Cree XP-E CopperNova
1 of: Star thermal tape pad - Single LED
1 of: Collimator Lens 8.7 deg viewing angle
1 of: Cree/Rebel Lens Holder
1 of: 1" Hilt safety plug - Style 2

You could say I did this on the cheap, I still haven't purchased a better blade yet but I plan to in the near future. I ordered some other screws based on the post I saw from flex3269, but I ended up not needing them and I was able to re-use almost all of the original screws.

I only had to drill 1 additional 4-40 hole into the conversion kit to attach the switch shroud, so you should purchase the 4-40 tap and drill from TCSS also or you will need to buy your own (not easy to find at home depot).

At first my problem was that if I were to have the conversion kit sit flush with the top of the chassis tube, there is about 1/4" of extra space needed to fit the stock battery pack in there. So you will need to dremel out the material inside the emitter and put the thumb screw from the conversion kit up higher. This is fine because it looks just like the original screw that was there which holds the trim piece inside the emitter, unfortunately you will not be able to retain this. As for wiring, it is straight forward. Snip all the wires from the blade harness and bridge all of them except for the brown one for the negative to the LED, the brown is the positive. This is exactly the same as the 2005 Luke. To house your sound board, you will need to make something. I took a PVC Coupler and dremeled out some of the inside so that I could fit the 5 pin power connector inside of it flush. The idea here is to replicate the size of the stock electronic housing to the best of your ability. I also cut some of it off, but you don't really need to do that if you make a large hole somewhere for your switch.

Here is my PVC coupler modified:

https://images2.imgbox.com/e2/24/tSnfTXqc_o.jpg

You will then need to make sure that when you wire up the LED that you don't have too much wire. The first time I did and it was too difficult to shove everything inside the PVC coupler along with the conversion kit and still get the whole thing to close up. I'd say no more than 1 1/2" of wire for that at the most. My board does go into the conversion kit a little so I wrapped it in electrical tape. Hopefully it doesn't melt it, but honestly I'll never have this thing turned on for more than about 5 minutes.

Here is everything stuffed together:

https://images2.imgbox.com/98/9e/kDmWjhJT_o.jpg

The other major problem with this conversion that others have stated like JediRich and flex3269 is that the stock switch is located at the top versus inside the collar. At first I thought I would relocate the switch inside the collar and rig it up similar to the 2015 black series. However, when I had a change of plans due to the placement of the thumb screw through the top of the emitter past the end of the hilt housing, I didn't need to relocate it afterall. Not only that, but I only had to dremel out a slot to put the switch into as the wiring isn't crushed against it. I used the regular metal cutting disc my dremel 4300 came with and it only took a few minutes, start slow and work your way up on the RPMs but it's not that bad.

Here is my modified conversion kit ready for final install with the new 4-40 screw drilled out and the dremeled out slot for the switch:

https://images2.imgbox.com/2b/c2/jglQptOJ_o.jpg

At this point I was ready to put everything back inside the hilt. As most know, these MR sabers and the hasbros that came after them have a guide inside that allows the battery pack to meet with the power connector. The nice thing is that this can be removed. I did this so that I could put in my conversion kit and electronics inside first, then put the battery guide back in to match the location of the notch on the connector so that everything would line up. You can get it out through the top by pushing on the tab with a flat head screw driver.

After everything was reassembled, I was surprised to see that the battery pack actually had more than enough clearance, so I used some foam to go around the ring of the battery pack at the bottom to keep the pressure on between the battery pack and the electronics.

Here is how it turned out:

https://images2.imgbox.com/2e/8e/J0gVXXw9_o.jpg

https://images2.imgbox.com/5c/39/DTV8iKYz_o.jpg

https://images2.imgbox.com/7e/73/AQbv6HmP_o.jpg

I'll just end by saying the dremel is your friend, this isn't straight forward and you have to be creative, but if you take your time you will be successful.

It's still probably easier to scrap the original electronics, power, and sound but I didn't want to do that. It's better than it was and I'm happy with it.

Thanks to everyone involved with this site for providing all the information I needed to accomplish this.