Fixing TST integrated tail light for Ninja 400

Aftermarket parts for sports bike like the Ninja 400 of Kawasaki is not cheap and yet many users tend to buy from a reputable site who thought they are invulnerable or not susceptible to damage.

Wrong. In this post a friend of mine handed over his TST programmable tail light of his Ninja 400 that gotten damage by just one essentials of nature. WATER!!!

That essentials created havoc inside damaging the unit. With the inefficient sealing of the unit especially the top part. Water resided inside, no where to exit and game over.

Frying the unit was hell, it lens cover was glued. Patience is the real key to open and separate the cover to the body of the tail light. I got into trouble of breaking a part of the lense but good thing it was at the very tip of it.

Moving on let us take a look inside.

(actual opening of the unit not shown) as the photo depicted the problem, rust begins to unfold eating any metal. Pins of the led was metal after all and it is where the real problem begin. This unit was still working with dead led arrays and busted leds. Well who here will appreciate a not complete set of illumination at the back of your motorcycle. Inspecting more of the problem is shown in the rest of the photos.

rust beginning to accumulate and populating the board.

some LED with rust inside was very visible.

and to clean the rusted area, ALL LED must be remove. Those led will be replaced. Unsoldering them is kind of a tricky one since the solder already accumulated oxidation and if not careful enough will damage the solder pads even further. Take your time and use solder paste or flux.

after removing those led. The board can be cleaned with 100% iso alcohol. Some copper traces on the board was already missing and eaten up by the rust. Jumpering is needed.

these are the led that was remove, many of them no longer illuminate due to missing pins.

After replacing all the led.

Note that the original led size was 4mm..and finding replacement will be difficult and the only size that can be use is 3mm. 5mm are those big ones and cannot be used due to spacing. So be noted of that.

and so after populating the board. Voila complete and working now like a charm.