Flashlight update - Maglites Reborn

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A brighter future
I had a couple of old 2D Maglites lying around the house and rather than buy new LED Maglites which are pretty pricy I did a little Amazon shopping and found 55 Lumen bulbs for around 10$ apiece. While my fingers were doing the walking I also bought a lower power 30 Lumen bulb for backup and that was about 3$.

Yes, I could have bought a couple of cheap plastic  LED flashlights for around the same price of the LED bulbs but Maglites do last a long time and my decision seemed to be a more practical approach. I do have a 2D LED Maglite and to be honest at 120 Lumens it does shine much brighter but it was also relatively expensive.

I found a 2AA LED flashlight also lying around that had leaked within the past year, one of those mini Maglites. I don't if you have ever had a flashlight battery leak in the flashlight itself but I can tell you that they are just about impossible to take out once they have become swollen inside. I tried vinegar, baking soda and nothing worked.

I went to Maglite's site and thought, well, I'll just send the flashlight to them for a repair / replacement. Not their policy; try the battery manufacturer they said.  Well, you can imagine that I would simply go around in circles with the battery manufacturer then blaming the flashlight maker and so on.

So, I thought I would take the flashlight apart and salvage the LED light so that I could replace an older 2AA Maglite that had a standard bulb with the LED light. Turns out that the LED bulb does not fit the older model no matter how hard I tried. Clever of Maglite forcing you into buying a new flashlight when the old one died.

Anyway, I now have two "new " flashlights.

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