I sure hope Chris pops back up at some point and that things are okay. In the meantime, I thought I would share some possible helpful information regarding troubleshooting for when I first got my kit around the beginning of the new year. I had some LED's out upon arrival and here are some troubleshooting steps Chris gave me which I will post here for the purpose of adding to the knowledge base and for the overall benefit of the forum regarding this thread:
"So have 8 LEDs out. Of those LEDs 6 are paired in threes and one group is paired in a group of 2. Closely inspect the solder bridges on the back of the circuit board. A solder bridge might be loose. Next inspect the solder joints connection the resistors and connecting the positive leads. make sure they are attached. next check if the LEDs are going the right way. You'll notice on top of each LED it will have 2 dots on one side. The dots all go a specific way. They all follow a pattern, except for the those 2 LEDs that are out. One those LEDs, the top LED follows the pattern of the horizontal row it's in; the other LED it reversed.
Finally, check to see if any of the LEDs are burnt out. You'll notice an LED is burnt out if the lens of the LED looks black or slightly discolor from the rest."
I replied with some pics of the backside and he had the following advice:
"Okay, for the middle section, I see one of the long wires in the middle bent. Straighten that out, and see if that does anything. In that area, check to see if anything is accidentally touching spots they aren't meant to.
You are right about the 2 LEDs out of the ends, one of the resistors is missing, and should be there. Do you have the correct value resistor that should go there? If not, let me know your address again, and I'll send you the resistor, along with spares.
Finally, on the other section that went out, I see nothing physically wrong, so it leads me to believe something was burnt out. The LEDs are sensitive devices, and could be damaged even by static electricity. My suggestion is replace all 3 LEDs, along with the resistor connected to the 3 LEDs, and let me know if that fixes anything."
In the end, no bulbs had burnt out but rather Chris stated "the LED module bent a tiny bit in the box initially, bending wires, and making some short circuits and such."
He fixed everything at the time and everything is fine as of now.
Also, you may find it beneficial to know that during a discussion on controlling LED intensity/output...he mentioned the following:
"Variable Resistor - To make the dimming function, I have to use a variable resistor and tune it myself before I send the LED kit out. To control it, get a small precision screwdriver and find the blue square looking electrical component on the board. It has a little brass screw terminal on it. Turn the screw either left many times or right many times to adjust intensity. It will require a lot of turns, these variable resistors are 25 turn."
I personally found that 8 turns either way made a noticeable difference. If you have the straight-bar style, each tail light has 204 LEDS for a total of 408 and if you replace any, make sure you drop them in according to how he described above in reference to the dots orientation. If a resistor needs replacing, this
calculator can show you what the value is that you are needing as Chris had also mentioned to me that his supplier had switched some brands so some resistors will look different possibly from one taillight to the next, but still provide the same overall resistance value.
Hope that helps and hope Chris is okay.
