integrated tailight....broke

[Juby]

Hey all

I bought an intergrated tailight this winter from clear alternatives and installed it. It was working fine everything was great...Now the nice weather has come so I took the old FZ out for a ride...after a couple of rides I noticed that my tailight was not working at all....I checked rechecked and rechecked all the connections..replaced ALL the fuses.. nothing worked..So I ended up removing it and installing the blinkers I got with my two bros exhaust..(luckily I kept them). So I don't know what happened I didn't ride hard at all, the bike was kept in a heated garage all winter..I think Ill keep the little blinkers I have on now

 

[deeptekkie]

Clueless. Sorry.

 

[YamahaMAXdRPMs]

I assume your brake light still works right???

 

[Juby]

Yes...I forgot to mention that...the brake light still worked....sorry

 

[SANGER_A2]

I'm glad I covered mine in hot glue now. Hopefully that will stop problems like this! Delicate circuitry doesn't like being exposed to the weather and vibration you get on a bike. Check the connections with a multimeter and examine the solder pads to see if any have lifted off/cracked.

 

[CannonballX5]

Honestly, there isn't a whole long list of what could go wrong. Depending on how the board is setup in the lens assembly, you could have corrosion on foil runs, burnt resistors or blown LED's. The most likely is if the unit doesn't come completely sealed from outside moisture, you probably had moisture build up inside the lens and this corroded the foil runs. (By the way, foil runs are the metal colored wire runs embedded in the terminal board that carries electrical current from the input wires +12VDC to the resistors and then from the resistors to the LED's.) The foil runs are very thin and if the manufacturer did not completely conformal coat the board, after all the components were soldered, then you can have just a little bit of corrosion and it eats entirely through the foil run. The foil runs can be repaired, but it is kind of technical and the tools that you need to really do it right are not exactly in everyone's tool kit. If the problem is burnt resistors, then just about anyone should be able to replace them. It requires a soldering iron, 60/40 electronics solder (not plumber's solder), and a replacement resistor that generally costs less than .50 from Radio Shack.

If you can open it up and peek around inside and let me know what you find, I can let you know if it is a quick fix or not. I can tell you everything that you need to do to fix it, if it is simple. If it isn't simple than I can probably fix it, depending on whether or not you care to send it off to get repaired, leave it alone, or buy another one. It is up to you. I don't charge anything for the repair, I just like to fix electronics. It's what I do for a living.

Let me know :thumbup: