Is my Nebo flashlight repairable?

[txlonghorn1989]

Not sure which forum is the right one for this question. I have a Nebo flashlight that I loved. It had red & green LEDs in addition to white so it was great for night hikes in the desert. It stopped working probably about 5 years ago and I just couldn't bring myself to throw it away. Had a garage sale last weekend and found it in a box. I opened it up (removed the cap with the lense and LEDs) and seemed to recall that it was me doing that which may have stopped it working in the first place. Regardless, I've since picked up a soldering gun and some solder and was wondering if I could fix it myself.

In the top there appear to be two unconnected white wires. You can see that one is quite a bit larger in gauge than the other. My questions would be:
1) How to determine which wire goes to which lead or does it matter?
2) Is there a particular type of solder and/or solder gun I should be using?
3) I haven't solder anything since I was like a teenager and we probably played around with a friend's dad's solder gun just basically making a mess. Is it going to be important that I don't make a mess with the solder in the flashlight where the leads and the circuit board are?
4) Anything else I should know?

Your help and thoughts are much appreciated!

Mike

 

[Citation]

Since no one had answered I'll give it a shot.
1. Yes it does matter which wire goes where. I would suggest using the side check on a multimeter to figure it out. Polarity matters with LEDs. You also need to worry about which wires operate the white vs other LEDs.

2. You will want something with a smaller tip. Not a gun type but a pencil type. A $10 Amazon cheapie would probably fine. You need it to be small enough to not bridge a bunch of wires at once.

3. I would suggest practicing on junked electronics. Not overly hard but you still don't want to screw up.

 

[txlonghorn1989]

Since no one had answered I'll give it a shot.
1. Yes it does matter which wire goes where. I would suggest using the side check on a multimeter to figure it out. Polarity matters with LEDs. You also need to worry about which wires operate the white vs other LEDs.

2. You will want something with a smaller tip. Not a gun type but a pencil type. A $10 Amazon cheapie would probably fine. You need it to be small enough to not bridge a bunch of wires at once.

3. I would suggest practicing on junked electronics. Not overly hard but you still don't want to screw up.

Thanks Citation. I know nothing about working on electric tools nor using a micrometer. I guess the one saving grace is that I can't make it any worse since it's already broke.