How to insert an E01's Contact Spring

This may sound a bit silly, but I am having a heck of a time getting the contact spring back into the bottom of the light without causing the bottom three coils of the spring to overlap each other. This causes the light to be temperamental when turning the light on, which it does about 80% of the time.

Is there some sort of trick to getting the spring in?

Some background: A Duracell battery leaked in the light. I have cleaned it up fairly well inside. The head works fine. I have put it together and taken it apart a few times. Eneloops only from now on.

never tried it on the E01 before but see if you can use thermal expansion to your advantage, remove the head and put that somewhere safe, run the body in hot tap water for a bit while keeping the spring in the freezer. Using gloves see if you can insert the cold spring in the hot case. Most likely this won't make a difference, but on occasion I use this trick to squeeze a fraction of a millimeter worth of tolerance between two different materials being press fitted together.

Find an ink pen that has the diameter of a AAA and disassemble it to make a "tube". Use this to push it back down in the body, it should work because it will push the outer rings of the spring instead of the inner ones.

I've never tried this on an E01 but would it help to twist the spring to tighten up the coils as you are pushing it in?

Get yourself a pair of those long medical type tweezers to start with,you can do wonders with them with all sorts of jobs,they have a very grippy end unlike standard type.