Are all SK-98 and SK-68 Lights the Same? Are there Some Better than Others?

Hey all.

I have each one, a 68 that’s takes a single AA battery and a 98 that takes the 18650. I confess to being a HUGE FAN of these 2 lights. I have both on my night stand ready to go at all times. The SK-68 is the one I grab first for everything needing some light. If either of these don’t cut it, I’ll get one of my other lights.
I have a question or 2 about these lights though. If you all don’t mind helping me a bit.

I’d like to pick up another couple of each for the cars, hunting bag and such. I am curious if there are some that are better than just the regular 68 and 98 that are sold all over the place for cheap. Is there a vendor selling these that out perform ones at Amazon or EBay?

My next issue is that my 98 is not working well. There’s got to be a wire not making contact or something amiss with the internals. I’ll turn it on and sometimes it’ll come on and other times I’ll have to shake it a bit to get it on. Then when I get it ON, it’ll just die out after a minute or 30 seconds. I’d like to get this back to working great cause I got it from a generous fellow member and he had done some upgrades to it. So, if I can save it, I want to try.

Can you point me to a video or pictures showing how to take it apart? I’ve never taken a flashlight apart before, but I have to try on this one cause I don’t want to throw it away. If anyone knows someone that would fix it for me, I’d be open to that too.

Any advice or help will be greatly appreciated.

If you know if other smaller lights like these that don’t cost much but perform great, I’d like to hear about those too. I’d prefer one that uses AA cells and I don’t care what cells the larger ones use.

No, they can be anything.
Seriously.
You do not know what you are getting, I don’t even know the original vendor - or - if you did know it, what they are shipping and selling now.
Maybe try reading current recent amazon reviews.

Back when those lamps were new on the market (10 years ago), you could get a decent one relatively easy, but today, the market is flooded with trash.
I have one very old SK98 and two newer ones - the newer ones have basically no cooling for the LED at all (nothing under the LED-PCB), the old one has. Since I own a lathe, I produced fitting pieces, but that’s not something that most people can do.

If you can choose from different colors, you are probably in the “trash”segment. I have bought one SK68 in green it is sooo light and feels absolutely crappy.

To open them you need a needle-nose pliers or quite rigid tweezers.
Unscrew the bezel and take out the lens, you will see the LED, mostly covered with some plastic or metal disk - around that you will see some aluminum with two notches or holes in it - put your pliers or tweezers into those holes and turn counter-clockwise. The whole driver&LED-Module should unscrew.
The disk above the led is just pushed in and can be levered out. Sometimes it is a screwed-in metal piece, but that should have two holes in it and can be unscrewed, too.

you would be better off with a lumintop AAA tool than the current SK68 versions
or the AA tool
they will not be $3 though

or this
https://www.aliexpress.com/i/32910302880.html
i love these things

wle

There might be a dozen manufacturers/ sellers of SK68/SK98 with(out) different brands. But even within a certains brand it is not always the same manufacturer of the light. Parts won’t always be interchangeable between batches.