Condensation in rear lights
 

Yo guys


got some condensation particularly on the offside rear light cluster, the one in the wing not the boot.


advisable to take out clean and reseal or just, buy a new one?

Chris

If you have the old style lights then take them apart and dry them out, the pcb's come off the back giving easy access to dry them out, if you leave it too long you will get corrosion on the pcb which is not good.

Message to the mods - Thread needs to be moved, I think! :)

Ahhh ****e i posted in D2! LOL

It was the mention of PCBs that alerted me to this! Just old fashioned bulbs and wires on the D2s! :)

I have a small amount in one of my rear lights, but only the reversing section. The LED area is perfectly fine and dry.

I got exactly the same thing with mine.

need to strip them out and take a look and see bout resealing.

Happening in both wind lights and the reverse lights in the boot too.


How would one go about resealing them? Or rather what would you use. Had a look today and they look like the come out fairly easy....

My wing-ones had this. You can take them out by removing the 10mm? nuts behind plastic caps. These are located beside the lamp when the boot is open. There are cut-outs with caps in the plastic boot aperture trim.
Be careful not to drop the nuts as they will fall into the bodywork.
A magnetic pickup tool is good for the last few threads.

You can then remove the lamps , remove covers and dry them in a warm place or maybe top oven while the bottom oven is on minimum.
Clean the seal of the covers and mating surface. Apply a tiny smear silicone oil if you like. I put silica gel packs in mine, you can get these from camera shops or ebay.

A year ow two later, the boot lid ones are the same but a lot more involved in removing them.

Gonna get mine done this week, whats best to seal it with? Never heard of silicone oil lol

I was getting condensation even on my brand new genuine set of facelift tail.lights when prewashing with jet washer (cold water). I don't think you will ever be able to avoid it tbh. Think, any "singleglazed" material will condensate when temp is different on the inside and outside

The right hand wing cluster is constantly condensated now though?

Silicone to re-seal? Got some adhesive silicone in the garage might be handy lol

Before trying to seal it, you need to get it dry inside otherwise the water will not be able to dry out.

Oh yeah i know that lol. Just unsure on what to seal it with lol

I smeared the seal with silicone grease from maplin, really thick stuff but commonly used to lube waterproof gaskets on all sorts of things. I spent half an hour with the hairdryer to dry it out, followed by wedging a couple of huge silica gel sachets in there.

Its only been a week, but so far so good.i wouldn't want to seal it with silicone sealant as its a bit too permanent for my liking.

Looked at my lights yesterday while I was doing some bits and bobs and it looks like all my rear lights have different levels of condensation.
I thought it was only the odd section from one or two.
O well.

Do mine on the weekend if its dry.

The lights are off and drying in the house.

Condensation.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...psmuwv9z95.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...pswaa8urb8.jpg

The internals. All looked in good condition no corrosion or anything.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...ps3ulixq8j.jpg

Now in the sun waiting for the water particles to bugger off so I can rebuild.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...psmv0zia5b.jpg

Lovely old Jukebox the lights are sitting on.

I need to see if I can get my rear boot lights off to dry those, my outer lights are both fine.

I wonder if a hair dryer will help dry them out without removal.

Thanks.
Its a Row AMI 74, 1975. I love it.

The hair dryer would but it would come back.
you need to find where the moisture it getting in and seal it up.

I really need to do all my rear lights. Mainly the right hand side but im putting off now as it looks effort haha

Dim them.then for now, it won't be.visible.then and.it will buy you some time.if it annoys you so much

Its not a hard job really.
Just a bit fiddly getting the LEDs out but its worth it.
Take off during the day, dry over night and refit the next day.

I got 4 silicone jel packs to put in but I forgot to do it at the time of putting them back together.
I'll keep an eye on them, if they start to go again I'll restrip, dry and fit the packs in.

Silicone gel packs
 

The silicone gel packs you guys are alluding to; are these the type you get in shoe boxes when you buy a new pair and in other clothing items to keep stuff fresh? :eek3:

Yes, those are the things

Got my tail light off today (boot lid one), and as Del suggested, having left mine too late, the pcb inside has rusted in areas.

I managed to get a replacement, of which the lens has deep cracks/scratches in; tried removing them with the usual wet and dry approach, but didn't do much.

I've tested the led's on the panels, and some do not light up. Going to try and desolder some of the good ones from my old one, and solder them onto the replacement unit I purchased.

Any one done any of the soldering before with the individual led's?

Theres another thread a out replacing the individual LEDs with some links to reasonable matches
http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7833