ScubaDadMiami reminded me of the time dive_addict and I rebuilt his Halcyon light canister. We don' t have a Halcyon dealer in the area, so we were in a pickle - well he was. I have a DiveRite canister.I had a second canister lid, cord and light head assembly made. If I am on a trip, and my light fails due to a burned out bulb, a bad ballast, a cord problem or a burned out switch, I can just take off the entire light head assembly, pop on the backup, and get back in the water. I will deal with any issues regarding the first light head assembly after the trip. The last thing you want to do after spending a lot of money on a dive trip is to have to abort a dive due to equipment failures in situation like this.
So we end up getting pointers from one of those old dive duffers that knows everything about everything, and the hunt was on. His light had flooded. The Halcyon canister model he has (some of you will find this really really funny), didn't have locking canister clips and one failed popping open on a dive. So what to do with no parts available?
First, we found the bulb from his light was identical to the one from an UK light cannon. He only needed to sauter some prongs on (so he cut off the prongs from the old bulb and sautered them onto the new bulb). He took the battery in and had another built for him from a batteries plus type of store. Then we replaced the switch by walking into good old Home Dpot and finding one that looked just about like it sanding off the edges so it would fit in the opening.
With a little bit of elbow grease and about $100 later, the canister was fixed. It was really pretty cool learning some of the stuff I did along the way. Later on, one of our students came in with a canister he built from scratch. Parts cost him about $250 - and having the know how and tools saved him money. Someone like me? I'd just be out $250 and have a bunch of parts laying around the house.
So who else out there has repaired their own lights or have built their own?