Hacking a Minichamp....

[MacTech]

Last weekend, I hit the pawnshop that's given me my other great deals, and found a decent condition Victorinox Minichamp for $15, great little keychain knife, it's relegated my Signature Lite to the SAK storage box, after all, i have yet to use that dim little 3mm red LED in *any* capacity, especially when i tote an arsenal of much *better* flashlights for EDC (Fenix L1, SureFire G2 W/3W LED and UCL glass lens, SureFire 6P w/ P61 HOLA, Inova X5)

So, i got to thinking, i wondered if there was a way to transfer the LED scale from one of my Signature Lites to the Minichamp, as the only thing it's missing is the LED scale....

anyone tried this, how difficult is the LED setup to remove, i'd imagine it's simply glued in place, or held in place with double-stick tape

ahh, what the heck, I can get a replacement one at the pawnshop for $5 if i break it, why not try it?

 

[MacTech]

That was easy!, took about 3 minutes.....

Surgery tools...
Straight pin (or the eyeglass screwdriver)
Vic Bantam (the exceptionally thin blade works great for surgery)
Patience
A Steady Hand...

Okay, here's how it's done;

Step 1; using the straight pin or eyeglass screwdriver, pop out the battery and battery cap (be sure not to lose the tiny battery compartment cap)

Step 2; using a thin knife blade (like the Bantam), very gently insert it between the scale and the body of the knife, move it to the end of the scale, and very slowly and gently twist the knife, the scale should work it's way loose, don't rush this step, do it slowly enough and you can pop the scale back on without needing glue to hold it on

Step 3; as you can see from the photo below, the LED light used in the Vic. "Lite" series keychain knives is a self-contained unit, there's *nothing* holding it to the frame of the knife or the scale, it's purely friction-fit

now that you have the scale removed, do the same thing to the donor knife, once both scales are off, put the LED assembly in the Lite scale and snap that scale onto the patient knife, move your old scale onto the donor

I had to do the same scale-swap on the pen scale as well, as the donor Lite was a Ruby scaled knife, and the Minichamp was a standard red celidor

Since I have *two* Signature Lites, i decided to perform a silly experiment....

i put *BOTH* Lite scales on the Minichamp, thus creating the extremely *rare* (only ONE known to exist...) Victorinox MiniChamp Lite Dual Bicolor...

However, since that little retractable pen is so useful (nice to always have a pen on me), I decided to put the other Ruby pen scale back on the Minichamp