Dim LED headlight

[seaweed]

I had a vendor install LED headlights the summer of 2018. Very bright, really liked them. I noticed this spring that the left headlight was significantly dimmer compared the right headlight. I had the vendor check the light this summer to see what was wrong. The vendor took the headlight out and looked at it and said that the shutter was defective.

Well I looked at getting a replacement headlight. About $240 at BRP. The shutter portion of the headlight cannot be bought separate. I could see that the shutter was operating by looking at the beam pattern but still the light on left side was more dim on bright than the right side on low beam. I decided to take it apart and examine the shutter. The shutter is working perfectly!!!!!

The LED appears to be a 9005 like Lamonster Garage sells. I saw the notches to allow for part of the LED hardware to be placed outside of the case. But the notches were in the lid not the lower part of the case. Also the notches were a bit small and the wires appeared to be crimped (possible damage).

While checking the operation of the shutter and beam pattern the light flicked off several times while I moved the wires around. This lead me to believe that one of the wires is damaged. It is possible that a wire is severed but still making contact inside the sheathing. I cut larger notches in the lower part of the case and moved the wires to the new notches.

I think there are 3 solutions for me to pursue.

1) Leave it alone and run with one light dim and wait for it to go out completely.
2) Buy a set of LED's from Lamonster Garage and replace the bad one. I would have a spare LED for the future.
3) Carefully remove the sheathing on the wires to find the possible bad wire and repair it. Not looking forward to that!!

Any thoughts that anyone can pass along to me would be appreciated.

 

[rick_w]

Buy another set and replace both. Don't worry about it after that.
Some of the manufacturers do have a lifetime warranty though.

 

[Bfromla]

If you can prove the defective led & not the shutter a decent vendor would replace the led. “Decent” to that they would have not blamed the shutter to begging with, unless was just knee jerk reflex because there were lots of shutter issues with led conversions:dontknow:

 

[bluewoo]

Door number 2 please!

 

[Mikey]

Door number 2 please!

:agree:

 

[IdahoMtnSpyder]

LEDs can and do go dim. I had a house light that did.

 

[seaweed]

Update

Several weekends ago I removed the faulty LED headlight and replaced it and the other headlight with new LED headlights from Lamonster Garage. Works just fine!!!!!!! I tested the leads from the LED to the driver and one of the leads was OPEN. This confirmed my suspicion that one of the leads was damaged due to the installation by the vender.

I also purchased two LED fog lights to be installed. Well, I started on the left fog light (I know now that I should have started with the right side). I gave up and finished that job this last weekend. I did the right fog light first. Easy! Next on to the left light. Many bruises, scrapes, and cruse words later I got it in but reattaching the air snorkel was even worse.
:yes::yes: