Today's MOT test - all lights flashing

I took the Bourton for an MOT. The only place that could do it sooner than two weeks time was a garage I hadn't used before. I phoned this morning, they booked me in for 4pm this afternoon.
I sat in the waiting area and after a while Mr Tester came and said come and look at this. He had the left indicator running and the rear lights were like Blackpool illuminations on 5th November. All the lights on both sides were flashing. He said well unfortunately that's a fail. The rear lights on the Bourton are a fancy LED thing, all moulded into one blob with no apparent means of  removing them. Even the brake lights including the roof light were flashing.
I asked is that something you can diagnose?
He said well it depends if its on the Mercedes chassis wiring or the converter wiring. These LED lights tend to run via a power resistor.
I remembered going under my A/S Nuevo and seeing power resistors screwed to the plywood floor, just behind the rear wheel where they would be 'water cooled'. i.e. corroded. I lay down, got underneath the Bourton and saw them, and remembered that when I first got this camper a year ago I had covered the ends of the resistors where they go rusty, with Waxoyl. So they weren't rusty, they were all warm meaning current was going through them all.
Mr Tester said there will probably be a plug and socket connector for each set of side lights.
I looked across the chassis following the resistor wires and sure enough they ran to two multi pin plugs and sockets. I tried disconnecting one, failed, tried the other, and with a lot of effort managed to turn one half of the connector against the other, then pull them apart. 
Mr Tester said ah, something's happened. What did you do? I pulled one connector off.
Having found out how they disconnect I put that connector back together. I then put more effort into the first one. As I managed to start it moving Mr Tester said Hold it, don't do anything. It's working. I left it alone, crawled out, saw the lights working properly and said That will be a pass, then, jokingly. Quite right, he said, I'll go and enter the results. He went back in the office to register the pass. Meanwhile I wriggled the plug back and forwards, and managed to separate the two halves. One pin was obviously corroded so I connected /disconnected the plug and socket several times to wipe the corrosion off. I went in the office and explained, I had found the corroded pin and will clean it with electrical cleaner when I get home. He said would you like some cleaner? Yes please, and I got back under, undid the plug and socket, cleaned up all the pins with the spray and refitted the two halves, then did the other plug / socket.
​I thought I had tried all the garages round my area, and found faults with all of them. This was the first time I tried this garage, and I was so thrilled with the co-operation there, not just immediately failing the MOT but suggesting where to look and helping me to find and fix the fault. I won't be going anywhere else in future!
Instead of just producing the fail certificate and book it in for remedial work he helped me to find and fix the fault, saving me lots of drinking vouchers.

The two connectors - if you have these, its a good idea to disconnect them and spray some electrical contact spray on them and vaseline on the joining plastic bodies

That is what I thought. I was soo soo lucky to find a garage where the chap was actually interested, and helpful. Makes me want to pay him to do servicing jobs that I would normally do myself.
And he had a clean, flat concrete garage forecourt that I could just lie down on and crawl underneath without infringing any H&S rules by encroaching within the hallowed premises of his garage. He is not easy to find, at the back of one of those typical farmyard industrial estates.

Aargh! More terminal plug issues in exposed places! If I were keeping the van I would throw out the plugs and sockets, fit tubular inline waterproof jointing connectors and then wrap these in self-amalgamating tape and/or heavy duty shrink wrap. How often are you likely to need to disconnect the joint?

I did just more-or-less that when I had the Nuevo, but I hope to sell this Bourton so I'll leave it. I'll need to periodically get my carer to check the lights are working properly.
When I was supplying reversing sensors to Rover they insisted I include Raychem heat shrink tubular connectors which have adhesive inside. The adhesive melts when the insulation shrinks and you end up with a totally waterproof joint which is far stronger than the wires it connects. You can get Chinese ones but I haven't tried them yet.

Good result  

Often wonder about those rear led lights, presumably if they should fail does anyone know if just the light cluster that’s failed needs replacing or the entire set of lights? Why Auto Sleeper didn’t use standard Jokon lights easily available if needed rather than those fancy led rear lights, would imagine in a few years they will be obsolete & AS won’t be able to provide them when these vans start aging, are the lights used on any other vehicles?

All vehicles now are designed to last a maximum of ten years - less if they can get away with it. I live moderately near a scrap yard - oops sorry, a registered used car spares dealer where they charge you £1 to go past the ticket office. You can't crawl over the cars and take bits off, you have to give your reg no. so they can look up the part and sell it to you in a plastic bag for 98% of the cost of a new part. Anyway, you should see the car transporters taking cars in there. They are all modern, not very old cars, not crashed, looking in good nick. Presumably they all have a light on the dashboard plus a £100 bill from a garage saying it will cost £2500 to repair it. The computer says so, and The Computer Is Always Right And Is At All Times And In All Places To Be Obeyed. Even if it is just a £50 sensor that is faulty.

Current motorhome rear lights, like the alloy wheels and other flashy stuff are there to sell the vehicle in the showroom. Once out of the showroom they serve no purpose that ordinary bulbs, steel wheels and inside lights operated by a switch ordinarily do. The Bourton rear lights have no external screws, which is probably a good thing otherwise they would get borrowed (it's not stealing if you claim that you were going to give it back y'r honour). They are definitely a unit, not to be messed with. I read some long while ago that a Tesla headlight costs £1,400 if one of the LEDs goes, plus you have to have an accredited Tesla dealer to fit it and reprogram the computer that tells it to turn on and off. It will have a different CAN bus address to the old light.

I decided to play tag with a lamppost on a car park and the bottom piece of the led lights came a cropper, the service center got a replacement and it cost me £60.00 to to replace it including fitting.

Pete

That's good, so it's not too bad then.

That was just the small one on the bottom, I did find some online direct from the manufacturer and strangely enough they were slightly dearer than auto sleeper. 

very hard to find on line, look for freestyle lights.

Pete