Dim sidelight repair on Evora 2010

[rabidh]

Hi everyone,

Not sure if this has been covered before (I couldn't find anything) but my Evora had one sidelight much dimmer than the other and I managed to fix it.

Everything I found online suggested either sending the unit off, or trying to split it in half and then replace the whole LED module with this for £230. It turns out you can do everything from the back of the light without dismantling it at all.

• Remove the light unit from the car (jack it up, remove wheelarch liner, unscrew, pull out backwards)
• Pull off the rubber bung for replacing the headlight bulb
• The sidelights are held in with 2x spring clips - bend the end of a bit of strong wire into a small right angle, then poke it through the headlight hole, hook it into the clip, and slowly pull a little on one side then the other until the clip is free
• Use a magnet on a stick to get the clip back
• Once both clips are out you can pull the LED module out - it even has a plug/socket for power

I traced the circuit out, but at least in my case (circle dim, top LED full brightness) all the LEDs were fine, and it was the resistor R1 (16 ohms) that was broken.

Basically the whole PCB is on an aluminium backing, even though it only draws about 3 watts of power! The aluminium shrinks and grows quite a lot with heat, and so it just stretched and cracked the end of the resistor. I replaced it with a through-hole part as that's what I had handy and the whole thing sprung to life.

Refitting is the reverse of removal  I fiddled the LED PCB back into the hole, then pressed the spring clips back on with a magnet on a stick (to hold one side) and a chopstick to press on the other side.

All sorted in a few hours, and not a very painful thing to do at all - worst bit was getting the light unit out of the car and re-aligning it. Hope that saves some of you a few quid anyway

[RHDV8]

Brilliant ingenuity!

 

[Bibs]

[jep]

Bright spark - not dim witted.

Justin

[rabidh]

Thanks - hope it helps someone.

 

The PCB is pretty simple and I took some measurements while it was out, so if there's demand I could make new PCBs (that weren't £230!). It feels like there's really no need for the fancy aluminium PCB - it draws very little power (200mA at 12v) so there's not a bunch of heat being dissipated. The fancy PCB is probably making the lights *more* likely to fail because of all the expansion/contraction.

[RichardC]

You know what that board needs adding? Some high power infra-red LEDs, "illumination for your dashcam at night". 904nm would probably do. They'd need to be pulse width modulated "to save on current and stop them overheating". Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.

 

(not serious)

[Craig Red Evora]

Hello

Resurrecting this thread to confirm it is totally possible to remove the sidelight board without dismantling the headlight as described by rabidh above. I repaired mine a couple of weeks ago.

I had two failed LED's which I replaced with ones from RS, 703-1212. They are a bit brighter so I ended up replacing all 10, then as that sidelight didn't match the other one, replaced all of those as well! It's fiddly but cost a total of £5 to have all the LED's working and a bit brighter too.

To get the old ones off the board I found it was better to cut them just above the solder on each side diagonally down to the board with a sharp knife and then remove what was left with a soldering iron. Trying to un-solder them intact just wasn't working and I was in danger of damaging the board.

Hopefully anyone with failed LED's that is handy with a soldering iron can try this fix, alternatively complete board are now available to buy I believe.