LEDs gone out on the Valenti's
 

Currently using the Valenti tail lights, I have 2 brake LEDs and 2 indicator LEDs go out. I've had the lights for about a year now.

Does anyone know what sort of bulbs they are so I can have them replaced? Or will I need to replace the whole LED light strip which I assume will not be possible to find. :iono:

Cheers.

I would contact your dealer if you bought new.

This is the main reason I've been holding back on the valentis, burned out LEDs. The only real fix would be to bake open the tailight if you're really electrically savvy and replace the LED with ones you can find. The only other fix works if you have a good reputation with your vendor and they will do a warranty replacement.

i remember first generation of these had a lot of problems with burnt out LEDs. the newer generation has fixed this issue. perhaps you got one of the older stocks?

well at least that didn't happen http://www.ft86club.com/forums/attac...1&d=1402245109

When I first received the lights I noticed a minor chip on the side of one of them. I contacted the vendor but they ignored my emails. I didn't bother too much after sending them about 3 emails because the chip wasn't that bad.

I've had the lights for a year now so the chances are this vendor def won't do sh*t.

I guess I'll look into other tail light options now, I've been wanting to swap them out anyway. I guess I have a reason to now.

post that vendor to vendor review section so other members dont get ripped off

...ok I'll do it...


He said Valenti not Visconti! >rimshot!<

Contact Valenti direct, complain how one of their retailers is ignoring you and say you want a replacement. You're the customer, this product is faulty, you have the upper hand.

I know just like trolling and visconti was close enough

Sent from my SGH-M919V using Tapatalk

The thing about LED is that they are best not used in an enclosure, because heat shortens their life.

So, to repair do you individually change or is it a strip? Cant find a DIY section... thats whats stopping me from buying. :(

It's probably the driver. LEDs are powered by a little circuit board. The LEDs themselves don't throw off a lot of IR heat, but the driver boards do produce heat. If you seal them up in an enclosure with nowhere for that heat to go, the driver boards will cook themselves. If you leave a chimney for the heat to escape, water gets in them. There's no really good solution other than to use high quality drivers and fewer LEDs rather than trying to light the car up like a Christmas tree. The Valentis probably go out in groups like they do because a single driver is running multiple LEDs.

A bunch of builders in Florida jumped on the LED bandwagon and installed LED street lamps and parking lot lights, which promptly failed. Since they were off during the day, they were cool enough for seagulls to perch on. The seagulls shit all over the heat sinks on top so that they overheated at night and cooked the boards.

So in other words, no matter how I buy them, the LED's will sh!t on me eventually compared to oem ones?

If they only lasted me 3yrs w/o issues id consider them.... Guess maybe TOM's are in my future?

If you're talking about LED lights in general, the answer is no. Not all LEDs crap out. Some of them last a really long time. It depends on the quality of the components used and how they're installed. With the Valentis, I don't know if it's their design or that they're using really cheap boards. They're not the only one with this problem. I've seen pics of Buddy Club tails with rows of lamps out also.

However, the Tom's tails are also LED. They don't seem to be losing boards the way others are. Depot may be using better components, or it may just be that they're not trying to cram 50 LEDs into a single housing.

Tom's do have a problem, though. The heat from the drivers melts the black plastic along the top of the light inside the outer housing, opening a gap for light to escape. Mine have this problem. Eventually I'm going to open them up and fix it, but a $480 set of lights shouldn't do this.

Here's a pic (not my car) of the problem:

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/attac...1&d=1424927604

Recent electrical engineer graduate here with a fun fact:

The term @extrashaky is referring to is called thermal runaway, the driver is supposed to lower voltage as temperature increases to the average of the LEDs preventing damage and then when temp decreases far enough go back up in voltage. But what that ends up happening as a byproduct of lower voltage, is an increase in the current running to the LED when you lower the volts. When the driver fails, is of bad quality, over stressed (i.e. one driver for way too many LEDs on a strip) or in the case of taillights constant heat cycling in an enclosed space, you end up with the set of the LEDS (can be 1 or even 5 or 10) getting too much current and burning themselves out. The OEM brake lights don't have this problem because its about 15 super bright LEDs spaced apart with a really high quality probably DENSO driver

I learned more about LED lights in the last 5 minutes then I did in the last 10 years! All very good to know as we are going all LED in the new plant we are building (not the same I know but the principals still apply).

Those are probably even more hardcore, they probably have dedicated heat sinks and stuff if they are industrial spotlight setups and such.

shhh...I thought we were keeping the new building a secret?

Not THAT one the OTHER one.

My first gen.'s both failed with 2 weeks of each other. Luckily they were still just less than a year old and were replaced by the vendor. The replacements have been failure free since then. If I remember correctly, there was a date stamped on the new ones on the outer housing. Don't remember if the first gens. had a date on them or not.

Those large lamps do in fact have heat sinks on them. As long as they have air circulating around them to take away the heat, they're fine.

Problem comes in when you put them in a drop ceiling or other enclosed space and don't allow for the heat. You have architects who used to allow for the heat from fluorescent ballasts who now think the LEDs don't produce any heat, so they don't provide for air circulation. They raise the drop ceiling too high or call for the fixtures to be mounted flush against surfaces, where the heat has nowhere to go. Then you get fixtures cooking themselves and failing, and everyone wants to blame the PE who told them all along that they can't do that.

Yup here's a good example:
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBASHBvrMC0"]LED Lighting System - Jay Leno's Garage - YouTube[/ame]

I have heard they've revised there designs and production stuff though, as in no more condensation as well