Denman
rbent member
Posts: 350
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Recently bought some really bright LED lights. Powered by (4) 18650 Lithiums, with hi/low voltage protection and velcro sack 1000 Lumen Cree XML LED. Nice housing with O-Ring mount. Battery charger. $60 delivered. Did the Denton 37 mile chip seal ride. One light failed. After opening it up I found a component came loose. No big deal to fix if you're handy with a soldering iron. LED's have a tiny power control board about the size of a quarter. All but one of the components are tiny so they hang on pretty well. That one component, an inductor is a ring about the size that would fit on a child's finger. Its relatively heavy and soldered to the board by two wires. On Chipseal it vibrates like a tuning fork. Remove the O-ring/bar mount Unscrew the glass bezel Remove the reflector cone With a tiny drill bit in one of the two spanner holes, unscrew the bezel around the LED Carefully pull the LED/Board assembly out whlie feeding the case wire in near the mount you removed Carefully pry the brass ring out of the aluminum base - the board is soldered to this brass ring.... Now you'll see the inductor. If you've gotten this far you'll probably see one of the wires was yanked out. Push the wire back through the hole on the board and solder it Now on the brass ring you may have broken the solder bead to the board..... Before soldering the board to the ring, clean the brass ring at the edge where you will re-solder the board.... Keeping the board about 1/8" off the ring lightly tin the outer edge of the brass ring, just a spot The ring takes a lot of heat and tinning it with the board away a tad prevents things from falling off the board at that point..... Let the ring cool, push the board back into the ring nest and solder Now take a piece of closed cell foam or a harden bit of silicone seal about 1/4" cube and insert it between the inductor and the housing Don't hot melt it; its just hot enough it might melt the ROHS solder..... You can glue it with silicone seal, but don't ever expect to service it again.... Now reassemble the light. It took me about 7 minutes to fix my light, and about 20 minutes to type this up. I hope you find it helpful.
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