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+--- Thread: Rear light cluster connectors (/showthread.php?tid=4009)
Rear light cluster connectors - Rich Hanlon - 18 Jun 2013
Hi all,
On a mission to improve the rear lights. I have a dead circuit board, which I am part way through fixing, but I also want to replace the electrical crimp/ pinch terminal connectors inside the multi-plug which connects the loom to the rear light circuit board.
They aren't like a normal spade connector as they are effectively a wire crimp going onto a little pinch-grip arrangement.
None of the vendors seem to offer them, or indeed anything less than a complete rear wiring loom.
Does anyone wnow if they are available anywhere?
Usual electonics outlets only seem to offer normal spade0-type connectors so I'm struggling!
Ta, Rich
Re: Rear light cluster connectors - Rissy - 18 Jun 2013
I just cleaned up the copper terminals on these plugs. A fibre pen, or a negative screwdriver blade can de contaminate the connections and let the electrons flow easier. Another thing I did for the rear, is went back to old school and replaced the L.E.D's with incandescent bulbs again. Made a world of difference!
The other thing you wanna do, which I did, is once you've fixed up and cleaned your circuit boards, is to spray coat them in circuit board lacquer. That'll prevent the copper oxidisation from happening again, which always slows down the little electrons too.
Re: Rear light cluster connectors - Rissy - 18 Jun 2013
You could always completely replace for a new type connector.....
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/imag ... _YUiCovAQ_
Solder wires on to the circuit board, trailing off to a male/female connector, and then cut and crimp the other connector male/female, on to the wiring loom.
Re: Rear light cluster connectors - Rich Hanlon - 18 Jun 2013
Ah, now that's not a bad idea.
Basically the connectors on mine have lost their springiness and don't pinch/ grip the circuit board with any force at all, so the contact is very sporadic.
The earth track on one board has completely vapourised. Luckily I have a spare board - although the spare board has a faulty bulb-holder...
So a relatively simple job of transferring one bulb holder from one board to another, you say?
But life has greater plans, and my soldering iron packed up half way through the exercise :evil:
Going to pick another one up at lunchtime if I get chance...
At this rate I'll be soldering wires direct to the bulb over the gas stove as a botch for this coming weekend!!!
Re: Rear light cluster connectors - Guinney1971 - 18 Jun 2013
also check the multiplug near the coil cover that does the lights, it was dodgy on mine
and Phill's cars, what we thought was a blown bulb/iffy board connection was actually
down to the multiplug.
A quick clean up and refit, and all is fine
Re: Rear light cluster connectors - Rich H - 18 Jun 2013
Quote:Does anyone know if they are available anywhere?
I hunted high and low for these years ago.
I came up with something close, but sadly it didn't fit in the plastic housing....
Re: Rear light cluster connectors - MikeWard - 27 Jun 2013
Rissy Wrote:Another thing I did for the rear, is went back to old school and replaced the L.E.D's with incandescent bulbs again. Made a world of difference!.What made you switch back to incandescent bulbs, Chris? Just curious - I've literally just made the switch over to LED's within the last month, and for me, the LED's are a lot brighter than the incandescent bulbs (which for comparison, were also relatively new).
Re: Rear light cluster connectors - Rissy - 27 Jun 2013
MikeWard Wrote:Rissy Wrote:Another thing I did for the rear, is went back to old school and replaced the L.E.D's with incandescent bulbs again. Made a world of difference!.What made you switch back to incandescent bulbs, Chris? Just curious - I've literally just made the switch over to LED's within the last month, and for me, the LED's are a lot brighter than the incandescent bulbs (which for comparison, were also relatively new).
Ah well, I had some LED's on the back clusters and some incandescent. The rear side lights and the brake lights were LED's and the reverse lights and the indicators were still incandescent . The LED's were huge big expensive looking things, which I thought were crap in all honesty, and were dimmer than the incandescent bulbs. They were on the car when I bought it. The performance might have been because they were old, i'm not sure, but what I did was I did a clean sweep across the board(s) and bought the slightly more expensive up-rated incandescent bulbs appropriate for each section from Halfords. The performance I thought, was very good, much better than before, for sure, and in all honesty, for a fraction of the cost of the VERY expensive modern LED's required to fill the same spaces. So it was a combination of knowing what to expect from incandescent's and for a much more economical price by comparison. Maybe I'll change again one day, if the performance is better than the older ones, but right now, I don't see the need. I'll stick with what I know, rather than gamble on LED's from the States for a high price, and may not be pleased with the performance again. This has happened already for me. I've actually just last year also swapped my side indicators back to incandescent's from LED's which I bought myself, as once again, I thought the LED's were crap. And those ones were definitely brand new, since I bought those ones myself. I also bought a LED to replace the glovebox light, but for whatever reason, it wouldn't work. I HAVE got new LED's for the centre console and am happy with those. For the binnacle, I have a combination of the two. I swapped back the top row of LED's to incandescent's so that the variability knob would work next to the clock again. I preferred it this way rather than only on or off with the LED's which were there before. I can honestly say, in the last 3 years, I bought about £150 worth of LED's for the car, and am lucky if i'm using about £30-£40 worth of them. The others are in a bag, part of unimpressive or non functional experimentation on my part.