I have a problem with one of my favorite lights and I can’t figure out which one it is and therefore l, I cannot start to try and fix it.
It is a short light that takes 1 18650 cell. It has no brand name on it. I think it’s just a standard type of light that all these light sellers just have.
It has a 3 click dimmer on it with a zoom head in it. When zoomed all the way in, if you point it at the wall you’ll see the SQUARE emitter. I THINK it’s called an SK69 or SX69, something like that.
I also have its twin that I bought many years ago from Amazon. It too has a zoom head but it takes 1 “AA” cell. I confess that it’s this light that I reach for 1st. If my bigger brother to this one worked, it would be my “Go to” light. I’m hoping you all can help me fix it.
The “AA” little brother cost about $4 and it’s been well worth it.
The problem with the larger one is that sometimes it’ll turn on and other times it won’t. Slight taps to the side of it doesn’t improve it. Also it might come on like it should and after a few seconds or minutes, it’ll cut out.
I bought this light from a member. It’s a great light when it works right. He told me he nodded it, but since I’ve never done that, I don’t know what a factory part and what’s not.
I’d like to figure out what the light that takes the 18650 cell is so I might be able to locate a diagram or video that will point me in the right direction where I can fix it.
I know, it looks like an awfully lot of headache over a $6 light. If I could find one that has a nice powerful beam, I’d get it and pitch this one and not worry about it anymore.
If you need a picture of it, I’ll post one.
Any help you can give me in this will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your time and any help you can give me.
That does sound like it could be a Wildfire SY69, or maybe a Skytroll SK69.
As with any electronics repair, start with the power supply and make sure that the battery is fully functional and good to supply the required voltage and current. Then check the power conditioning section of the board, e.g. fuse, emi filter, capacitor, etc. Then to the input control section, switch, relay, mcu, etc. if applicable, and then the output control, driver, amplifier section.
Good luck with the repairs and hope you get it working again.
Yeah, good tips for the problem, and would like to add that when I troubleshoot, I tend to start with the simple things first. For example, loose wires, power supply, battery position, on/off, etc. Then when the simple stuff is done, I can then go on to the medium-difficulty ones. Hopefully, I don’t have to advance to the “Hard” stage!
One test is easily done: the switch. Take off the tailcap and let the light “stand on its head”. Take a little bit of electrical wire (or a paperclip) and try to connect the bare rim of the tube (body) with the back-end of the battery. If you can see any light, repeat this a few times. This means you have a faulty switch. I’ve had a few of these lights and they are fairly easy to disassemble, except for the switch. That is a press-fit. Unless you can find a spare one, to me that is the end of the line (eh, light).
Did you make any progress with this? Good information above. If you're new to how lights work and understanding what's going on, the ol' wiki might help a little. Here's the link to the kind of perfunctory troubleshooting page but it has a couple of helpful links to forum posts (I can't get the old CPF links to work for me but the "Dan's" BLF post is still here...scroll down a bit on that one).
I assume you've already done the most basic thing in cleaning the threads and bare metal contact surfaces? Often just old oxidized lube or the "wrong" lube can cause intermittent connections, or maybe some debris in there. Switches do fail, especially cheapies, so that's always a likely candidate and Hank's description above is an easy test to try and pinpoint that. Other things in the head/driver take more exploration but sometimes easy things to spot like poor soldering or solder spatter, etc. will be a quick fix, if the light is easy to disassemble.
If all that is too much trouble there are definitely some much better zoomies these days. I'm not a zoomie person so I don't own any of these but this one from Simon has been well received in reviews (he has a couple other options in his store in the "Z" series, but this basic one without battery still lets you pick emitters and such). I think Lumintop and Sofirn have also had some out if I'm not mistaken...surely several others that are not the old low-end copies. Some of these are probably on amazon, too, if you don't want to wait for china shipping.
