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El Gecko

Waterproofing LED kits?

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Can LED lights short circuit and blow out if you get them wet? Hoping to drive in the snow and I'm wondering if there's any waterproofing necessary to help protect the lights? Hot glue on the backs of the bulbs?

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LED´s are generally low voltage and in themselves waterproof enough.
But if you hit any salted snow, the increased  conductivity of salt water may cause shorts across the legs. High intensity white LED´s are more susceptible.

Furthermore, your LED driver may not be all that waterproof.

And the rest of your electronics need to be waterproof as well.

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Depends, are yours direct feed or through a fancy control box with turn signals and brake lights? If direct feed, mine survived this no problem at all.

(of course your other electronic bits have to be waterproof too!) 

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41 minutes ago, alvinlwh said:

Depends, are yours direct feed or through a fancy control box with turn signals and brake lights? If direct feed, mine survived this no problem at all.

(of course your other electronic bits have to be waterproof too!)

Yep mine are direct feed, through a typical On/Off switch and plugged into the BEC line from the ESC. Sounds like they will be ok! (as long as the switch survives)

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Hot glue might be used where you could.  Like between the legs of LED and the back side of the switch.  

 

 

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7 hours ago, Juggular said:

Hot glue might be used where you could.  Like between the legs of LED and the back side of the switch.  

 

 

That's sort of what I was thinking, just for extra insurance. We have a glue gun around here somewhere...

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4 hours ago, SupraChrgd82 said:

A little gob of dielectric grease or some silicone sealant works reasonably well.

This would be my suggestion as well, unless you’d want to mask / temporary remove and apply PlastiDip.

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Hmm I've read on other forums that silicone sealant/caulk can be slightly electrically conducive, just enough to fry the LED bulbs?

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In my opinion, water proofing the LEDs themselves or their connections to the wires, is hardly necessary. I've never had problems with LEDs in models due to moisture or water. The voltage is so low that even a partial short circuit (salty water) won't result in a significant current to cause any permanent damage.  

That said, my knowledge about LEDs is very moderate, but through my work in quality assurance at automotive sub-suppliers, I've been a bit involved in investigations of different failure modes for defective and intermittently working LEDs.  With the introduction of multicoloured "ambient lighting" as a popular (although in my eyes ridiculous) feature in modern cars, the number of LEDs in cars has exploded. The occurrence of defects has increased accordingly, and despite being low cost components, LEDs in ambient lighting are mostly laborious and very time consuming to replace, causing high cost to the owners or car manufacturers (depending on warranty). Accordingly, when quality problems occur, we are expected to and prepared to put quite some effort into finding the root cause and suitable countermeasures.

Because of this, I feel pretty confident in stating that moisture/water rarely damage LEDs or their wiring (if electronics are used to control the LEDs rather than just "oldfashioned" and robust voltage reducing resistors, these electronics are of course vulnerable to moisture/water entry).   What typically kills LEDs though, is the high voltage of static electricity. Primarily when disconnected from their power source, of course. A couple of years ago, we had major problems with defective LEDs of the ambient lighting in the door panels manufactured in one of our plants.  After confirming that the LED manufacturer and the company that soldered the LEDs to the PCS were free of guilt, extensive investigation in our own plant identified static electricity as the main risk. As the plant is located in a country with typically high air humidity, the attention to moisture as a possible cause was high too, but virtually excluded as a possible cause for LED damage. With countermeasures to reduce the risk of static electricity introduced, LED damage was a thing of the past.

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Thanks @Mokei Kagaku for all those details!!

I had suspected some of that, so it's good to have it confirmed and explained.

I'll try the truck as it is for now, and if I have problems, I'll do something different!

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