Tail Light Circuit Boards

In my previous blog post I mentioned the fact that my passengers side tail light was not working, as it turns out the tail light circuit boards were the problem. There are rivets in the boards that connect each light bulb to the ground and for what ever reason, over time, these rivets lose contact. So there are two options, spend $130 on a new set of boards, or fix the existing boards for $2.50, I chose the latter option. On the right is a picture of the boards before I cleaned them up. There was a good bit of corrosion on them, and it took a couple of hours of cleaning to get them to the point where I was ready to actually fix them. To clean them up, I first using a very high purity (90+%) rubbing alchohol. Why 90+ purity? Because the lower purity stuff is full of water and it takes forever to dry out, which could cause a short if you hook things back up too quickly, where as the high purity alcohol dries almost instantly.

After the initial clean with alcohol, I used some steel wool to remove the corrosion and really clean the boards up. You could also use a very fine grit sand paper as well. If you do clean them with the steel wool, make sure you don't leave any bits of steel wool inside of the light bulb wells or it could cause a short when you hook things back up! Then I again cleaned the boards with alcohol to remove any corrosion residue. Once I was done, they looked pretty good again!

To fix the boards, there are two options. One is to drive some small screws through the rivets so they make better contact with the boards, and the other is to putting a bit of solder around the rivet, insuring the solder also connects with the ground on the board. I felt like soldering was less invasive, and considering I have also had quite a bit of practice with soldering recently I decided to solder the boards. I soldered all of the connections on the boards, even the good board, just to make sure that I don't run into any more bad connections as I test the brake lights and turn signals; so far I have only tested the tail / running lights. The image on the right shows one of the cleaned up and soldered boards.

I hooked the boards back up the the the car and violia, I have completely working tail lights now! This project took almost two hours, but again, I save myself a bunch of money by just fixing the boards myself. It is a pretty easy fix, and I am always amazed how many people just lay out the cash and toss the old boards out with out even thinking twice about it.