Removing wires from indicator on front wing - sealed unit?

[andy_harries]

The indicator light on the wing has stopped working so I need to swap it out - however it seems to be a sealed unit and I can't see how to get into it to disconnect the wires.  Clearly I'm missing something but I can't work it out and don't want to get too brutal with it yet.  Any ideas on how the wires disconnect?

 

Bit of background as to why its stopped working...

For some reason the previous owned riveted the left front wing on rather than using Sikaflex or something like that (the other wing is attached as usual with Sikaflex).  Went a little wide on Stowe and went over the curb with the left wheel - nothing too bad, but the vibration was enough to make the rivets fail (on closer inspection they were very well fatigued) and the wing was flapping around till I slowed down and got into the pits.  The indicator light on the wing was working before and the main left indicator works (as do both right indicators) so I suspect flapping about has wrecked it. 

The wing is pretty tatty thanks to that, but its structurally sound and with a novice season in the speed championship coming up I'm not going to buy another one just yet lest I wreck it.

 

[700newtons]

Perhaps worth testing that the problem is definitely not a dodgy Earth connection. What is the black wire attached to?

[andy_harries]

It's an earth and connected to the wingstay.  Looks like it wasn't damaged in the wing flapping incident as there aren't any marks or changes to where it is connected.  From what I can see on the other side (that is working), the earth is connected to the wingstay in the same way.  Might prod it a bit on Saturday just to check.

I've been on caterhamparts.co.uk and it looks like it comes as a sealed unit with the wire already integrated which is annoying.  If it is buggered, I'll either need to splice some wires (not easy to weatherproof given the position) or probably the better approach is just to suck it up and install the new unit and wire in total (having dug around the engine bay to work out where it connects to).

https://caterhamparts.co.uk/indicators/4922-side-repeater-led-light.html

Grrr.

[Mrp]

Hi Andy

Changed my orange ones to JAL white ones recently and didn't want to rethread them the wing stays. as they would not come apart I did a proper inline solder connection with double layer shrink fit for the green wire and then shortened and re crimped the earth tag.

Thats the only way as far as I can see.

Mrp

[Wrightpayne]

When I built my kit in '98 I never fitted the wing repeaters.

This year I have fitted some small LED side indicators into the headlights (£8 each from SVC)

Having driven it yesterday to the MOT, these indicators in the headlights are going to be a MAJOR SAFETY FEATURE because I can see when the indicators are on.

I would consider moving them if the cost of replacement wings is feasible / needed.

 

Ian

[Dave Hardcastle]

Whenever I've had faulty indictor repeaters, the cause has been a bad earth. My previous Caterham had quite a few earth related issues. In the end I ran an earth wire directly to a screw type connecting block, and took any new earth wires I needed from that.

A quick check, wire brush the wing stay connection, then just hold a new earth wire from the battery against it and see if the indicator starts working.

If you do need some new repeaters, I fitted these to my current car and very pleased with them.

[andy_harries]

Thanks guys, really helpful.