Dorcy 1 aaa light dying?

I have two of these lights from about the time they were first sold at walmart. One is silver and kind of a flat finish, the other red and a nice smooth surface.

The silver one is on my key ring and banged around a bit and used off and on. The red one was given to my dad who I am going to assume like with most of the stuff he owns, took care of it.

Anyway, both seem to of died. My dad said his quit working one day. He said it use to flicker when he tapped it, now nothing. Even tried another battery.

I too found mines is in the blinking stage and is for the most part useless and unreliable as to when it will even blink.

Can these be fixed? Is this a problem with them?

I know of no known common circuit failures in the little Dorcy. Most likely causes of such behavior are poor connections at the battery ends and the switch. The switch, such as it is, has two points of contact, the tailcap spring to the four pronged plate in the cap, and the plate prongs to the end of the battery tube. I would clean as many of these points as you can, and should that still not work, the cap can be disassembled by prying off the wire key loop with a small screw driver or such, it just has short ends sticking into the plastic button. This will allow you to take some steel wool to the parts inside. Access to the positive spring means unscrewing the head, which takes a lot of force, but us modders will get it off no matter what! I use a few rubber bands wrapped around the head and back of the tube for grip and diameter, and usually a pair of pliers lined with leather in the jaw on the head. This will also let you make sure the edges of the circuit board are making contact in the slots at the head end of the battery tube, which is a must.

It is easy, BTW, to tell if the problem is in the cap when a light is completely dead, by taking the cap off and shorting between the battery negative end and the bare end of the battery tube. This will turn the light on if the cap was the problem, and you can focus there. If it is still dark, the problem is up at the head.

While not the latest CS Nichias, I believe the LED's are indeed the older BS Nichias, which is just as durable, despite being less bright and generally more blue, so it is not too likely it has blown. But if it has, BONUS, because once you get it apart, it is about the easiest board to solder on a new CS Nichia, or LED of your choice, and boy will it become a new light with that mod!

Good luck, these are really neat little lights, worth fiddling with. I have five with various LED upgrades in them, one in my pocket as I type, plus a few stock waiting for the next experiment.

BINGO. I shorted it and it worked. I removed the D ring from the tail and fooled with the cap. Seem those 4 contacts are worn and werent making good contact.

Going to try dads light to see if that work for it too.

Ditto to what Hondo said. Try replacing the LED. Easy to do and the difference (with a good CS, SMJLED, or similar 5mm LED) will just knock you over...

For the record, I got a 2x improvement in output, measured...