Dodgy parker globe socket

[SegR]

I've been unhappy with my flickering LED parker(s) and was changing them out tonight. Turns out I've got some dodgy wiring into the back of the parker socket - at certain angles I can jiggle it and the light goes off. This was either the cause of my flickering, or may have contributed to early LED death.

How easy are these to pull apart and repair? There's bugger all play in the cabling and I can't even pull the socket up above the level of the battery to get a good look at it. Has anyone tried repairing/replacing these before or am I better off taking it to an auto sparky?

[zch91]

The actual LED is generally the problem. The wire that protudes and makes contact with the socket is a lot thinner than stock so doesn't make very good contact.

Here's a picture of how I fixed mine, gone from constant flickering to no flickering at all

[SegR]

Ha nice hack. I don't think it's the contacts in this case but will double check with an extra set of hands and an old school globe or multimeter tonight.

[SomeFReaK]

i have also had the same trouble, and also found the contacts on the led globe to be the problem. My solution was to pull out the trusty soldering iron and put solder on all the legs to make them thicker

[SegR]

Dunno, you guys might be right... Couldn't replicate it with an incandescent globe. Maybe jiggling the wires was moving the socket contracts around. Will try a leg thickening trick when time permits and see what happens.

[SegR]

i have also had the same trouble, and also found the contacts on the led globe to be the problem. My solution was to pull out the trusty soldering iron and put solder on all the legs to make them thicker

OK so SomeFReaK wins the thread (due to method) and zch91 comes second. I did the leg thickening trick by loading the pins with some solder and now the globes click in nicely and don't flicker when the socket wires are molested.

I thought because these were nice Osram globes they surely couldn't be at fault, but the wire they've used for the contacts is seated in the plastic groove of the globe base just too well and I guess the very slight movement of the socket pins when the wires are moved was enough to break contact. The globes are great though - single chip 4000k T10 parkers with a diffuser over the LED chip. At least as bright as the 9 chip ones I had in there before.

The original LED parker was faulty however - the front firing chip is busted.