CA-300V Super LED tester TV Backlight Review

Years ago I started testing TV LED Backlights with 9 volt batteries.  There are even videos of me doing that on Youtube. Well I fianlly broke down and bought a LED tester.  The reason was that I had just received a second identical TV to one where I had replaced all of the LED strips and this time I did not want to buy any, but to reuse the good ones from the last TV instead.  But I was in for a big surprise.  Only two LEDs were bad in the last TV so I was sure I was all set to fix the new one.  However in the new TV there were at least 20 bad LED's.  Even with 8 good LED strips out of 10, I was still not able to fix all the lED's!!  The best I could do was to leave 2 bad LED's.  On top of that, as I reasembled the TV two lenses fell off of the strips, so it has to be taken back apart and repaired again!

The short story is that this tester works great.  I did have one strip that tested bad in the TV but tested good once it was removed for some reason.

Here is some of my LED strips that I have collected over the years that needed testing.

 

Here is how to test the LED strips.  Basically you go + to + on each strip.  Note that the strips are not always labeled correctly!  The - terminals are usually just shorts.  Trial and error is the quickest way to find the correct polarity.  You can use a jumper to short out one end of the LED strip if you want to go positive to negative at one end of the strip.  Once you replace the bad strips then test everything to make sure it works together before reasembling the TV.  Sometimes the LED strip connectors have issues.

This are some really burnt out LED's

The results are not that good!  A number of the lenses fell off and had to be glued back on.  It turns out that the lens has to be centered on the money or else you get uneven lighting. You can slso easily see where a LED is not working.  I guess I should have purchased new LED strips.....

I studied the "Lens Crooked" issue and what happens is that one of the three bumps slips off and the lens ends up higher on one side that the other, or off center.  This is quite common when you reglue the lens.  I do not know why so many of the lenses fell off the strips in this TV.  I suspect maybe it was dropped or something.  Also, I was reusing LED strips that had been removed form another TV, that process is known to loosen or even pop off the lenses.

I took it back apart and reglued three LED Lenses back in place.  Then, while putting it back together, I heard another lens fall off.  Then I took it apart again and found not one, but three lenses had fallen off.  None of the loose lenses had been glued on before.  So I glued them and put it back together again.  The bad LED is on an "A" strip and I only have "B" strips that are spare.  Overall it looks much better but still is not perfect.  The only real solution is to replace all the LED strips with new ones....

Dynex DX-37L150A11 Replace Fluorescent Backlight tubes with LED strips

I hate to see newer TV's go in the garbage.  Recently I was at our local firehall as they filled bin after bin with defective TV's as part of our towns cleanup.  Many, if not most TV's were just having issues with the backlighting.  I even brought a 55" model home to repair.  Anyway, I had a 37" TV that had the older fluorescent tubes for backlighting.  I watched as one, then two, then three of the tubes went out.  Then the TV quit, no backlight.  So I thought I would fix it with LED strips just for the fun of it.

At first I tried RGBW LED's because I had them on hand.  They did not work well at all.  Amoung other issues some of them came loose and fell against the screen becoming very visable.

Then I used some 12 volt LED strips.  I added glue to make sure they stayed in place as well as stuffing the LED strip ends under the plastic edges at both ends.  Total cost $18 for the LED strips.

Putting the TV back together...

This is the old fluorescent tube driver circuit board and the 10 tubes that were removed from the TV set in the upgrade process.

This is the almost final result.  Unfortunatly one of the LED strips developed issues.  I think one of the wires shorted to the metal chassis and maybe burnt out some LED's.  The strips were 12 volt strips and the power to the removed tube driver was 24 volts, so I have arranged the strings in sets of two strips in series. Now to take the TV apart for a third time and replace the defective LED strip!

Update: I replaced the bad LED strip and now it works perfectly!

2011 Chevy Equinox One Year Repair history.

Well it has almost been a year since I purchased the Chevy Equinox.  It has been an expensive year at that!  I cannot remember what some of the prices were so I guessed what they might have been.

First year repairs:

Starter                                 ~$200 (Replaced it myself)
Water Pump                        $700
VVT Valves                        ~$200
HP Fuel Pump (Twice)       ~$300 (Had striped bolts, needed helicoils installed)
Alternator                           ~$500
Front Brakes                       ~$500
Wheel Bearing                    $375
Throttle Body                     $100 (Did not help anything)
Oil Pump                            $450 (Lost oil pressure when idleing when hot)
               Approx Total:      $3325

Still needed:

Rear Brakes $400
Front tires    $500

The problem is that the high pressure fuel pump puts a load on the cam shaft that puts a load on the cam shaft actutor, then the timing chain, then the timing chain guides and tensioner then the oil pump.  On top of that direct injection does not clean the intake valves that get covered in burnt oil from the PCV valve. On top of that it takes a quart of oil every 1,000 miles because of low tension piston rings that do not clean up all the oil so it gets burnt onto the rings thus cakeing them in burnt oil.

At one point the car would go into limp mode and shut down every mile or two.  I really struggled to get it back home.  It turns out that the HP Fuel pump had broken, the spring was completely detached, and it was pumping gas into the oil as well as leaking gas on the motor front.  One of the pump mounting bolts had broken in half!!

BTW, this is how to fix an Equinox that will not start (that still has dash lights), just unplug the circled connector on the computer and then plug it back in (This also erases all problem codes):

Since I wrote this it developed another issue.  It would stall sometimes when you stop and sometimes when you almost stop to make a turn.  Then it went into limp mode and would not leave first gear.  So I added some Lucas transmission fix and it has not stalled since then.  It does still sometimes have a rough shift down so I think it needs to have the transmission fluid changed.

JBL SB2 Subwofer Speaker Repair

 I recently repaired some JBL SB2 subwoofers.  They had been overpowered and there were boils in the voice coil form. I have never fixed a speaker with this problem before.  It was hard to get a file in there because of the magnetic field.  But once in place it turned it side to side to remove the bubbles.

Once the bubblew were cleaned up I glued the cover back on and tested the speaker and it worked!

Good Bye to the 2008 Ford Taurus

Well the Ford Taurus developed a really bad brake fluid leak.  i crawled under it and discovered that the drivers side rear tire support had rotted out, as well as the brake lines.

I fixed that with expanding foam.  It actually drove better!

Between those issues, it getting stuck in first gear, the AC not working and a few other issues it went to the scrap metal heap.