Hi, I have a 62 plate 1.2 punto easy. The same left hand side led tail went very dim. It has now been ok for the last 2 months after I hopefully found a cure. I took the unit from the car, and also unscrewed the bulb holder from the unit. There is a circuit board inline with the led which can be seen inside. So I drilled a small hole through the back plastic in line with the screw holding the circuit board in. Then after taking the screw out, the circuit board swings out. I only re-plugged the edge connectors and its has worked ok since. Worth a try as it cost nothing and just leaves a small hole in the back of the unit which makes no different to it.
Technical LED Tail Lights
- Thread starter CJXY
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Technical LED Tail Lights
Has this lasted?
dejajankovic
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Sory on my bad english.On my Punto 2012 yesterday it happened that the left led was barely shining. After I took unit from car, I tried to remove moisture with a hair dryer, and it works, the led now works normally. Thanks for the advice, I saved 50 euros for how much they are selling us on car scrap for the whole last unit
derbyshire gp
Member
Interesting that its always seems to be the left hand side cluster that goes
Hello Everyone
Registered just so I could give feedabck.
I have a Fiat Punto Easy 1.4 purchased late 2012 which also had the left led on the back light seemingly go dead.
Mine's been dim for over a year and recently seemed to be completely dead. Yesterday as per reading this entire post I removed the fixture, disconnected the bulbs from the fixture and put them aside.
I then took a hairdryer and blew hot air over the back of the pcb which you can just see sort of in the middle of the fixture and then at the top on the led's moving the hair dryer up and down for a few minutes.
My light is now working again :slayer: Full brightness, extremely happy. Just becareful I did slightly melt some of the plastic inside slightly (Don't let the hair dryer blow on one point for too long) but you would never notice once fixture back in place. Oh I did let it cool off as the fixture was quite hot to the touch when I was done (Hence melting). I'm wondering now if there is a poor soldering job on the pcb as my light fixture unit had no damp or moisture. I live in South Africa which has predominately nice warm and sunny weather.
Registered just so I could give feedabck.
I have a Fiat Punto Easy 1.4 purchased late 2012 which also had the left led on the back light seemingly go dead.
Mine's been dim for over a year and recently seemed to be completely dead. Yesterday as per reading this entire post I removed the fixture, disconnected the bulbs from the fixture and put them aside.
I then took a hairdryer and blew hot air over the back of the pcb which you can just see sort of in the middle of the fixture and then at the top on the led's moving the hair dryer up and down for a few minutes.
My light is now working again :slayer: Full brightness, extremely happy. Just becareful I did slightly melt some of the plastic inside slightly (Don't let the hair dryer blow on one point for too long) but you would never notice once fixture back in place. Oh I did let it cool off as the fixture was quite hot to the touch when I was done (Hence melting
). I'm wondering now if there is a poor soldering job on the pcb as my light fixture unit had no damp or moisture. I live in South Africa which has predominately nice warm and sunny weather.
Hi. Just came across this thread via Google! This is exactly what my boy's 2012 Punto is doing! I tried posting in the Grande Punto section (because it looks like more people look there than here). So far only a limited response. This thread answers just about all my questions - thanks everyone.
I removed the light unit but the black plug on the back of it is very very tight. So I left it alone and removed the bulb holder unit which allowed me to check the bulbs, without unplugging from the loom. (That was when I discovered the side lights were LEDs!). Put it all back together but it's still dim! Haven't tried slapping it or the hair dryer treatment yet.
I think probably a new unit from Shop4parts is going to be the way to go, especially as I read here that new units are improved/modified to get over this problem, but I've still got the problem of removing the plug on the back of the unit. It does seem very tight. I can't see any sort of interlock, like you get on a sensor plug for instance? Is it just a case of getting "physical" with it? I'm worried it's going to break/snap.
Thanks for any help
Jock.
OK, just me being over cautious/stupid! The black connector plug does have a locking clip which needs to be firmly depressed to allow the plug to be pulled off!
I have posted "Punto Led rear light gone dim" in the "tech" section. The hairdryer procedure works well. You don't need it to get that hot but you do need the air to circulate for some time to be sure all the moisture is chased out. We did it for about 20 minutes and I see someone else recons they did it for about 15 minutes.
The thick spongy sealing material on the back of the bulb holder was in good condition on ours but, we were so excited to find out if it had worked that I forgot to check what the seal (if there is one, I didn't look) around the edge of the bulb holder itself was like before reassembling it.
My son noticed "made in Turkey" on ours too! Our car - actually it's his car - is a 2012 registration so it must be a pre-modified unit. If the problem reoccurs we'll be buying a new one from Mike at Shop4parts.
Thanks again for all the great info in this thread. I doubt if I would have thought to use the hairdryer trick because looking at it revealed no sign of any condensation at all.
Regards
Jock
Update. My boy's just off the phone from telling me the Fabia diesel has gone into "limp" with various dash lamps lit! Thanks son! My bet is on a blocked DPF because it's been doing regens a lot just lately and they're up around the 140000 mile mark. Anyway going to have a look tomorrow with my old pal VCDS tucked under my arm.
He cheered me up though by telling me the Pinto's rear light is still nice and bright!
He cheered me up though by telling me the Pinto's rear light is still nice and bright!
gazevedo
New member
Have some of you bought the LED tail light from the depo? For one who bought it, is it working well? Do you still have the same problems as the fiat version?
Hi. As you can see above, we had this "dim" problem on my boy's Punto 2012. Used the hairdryer on it and it worked for a while but then failed again: https://www.fiatforum.com/threads/punto-led-rear-light-gone-dim.463693/ So, as you can see from the link, we bought a new unit from S4p - that was back in 2018 - and it's still working absolutely fine. The car lives outside all year.
