Bummer. More Salvo Light Woes...

[Rick Inman]

21W Salvo HID

Well, I just took care of the battery issue a few dives ago, and now I have another problem.

I had 5 miss-fires in a row. In almost 200 dives, I've had maybe two miss-fires, and not in a row. And tonight I had FIVE! It would start to come on, brightening up for maybe 5 seconds, and then go black. Same way every time.

On the sixth try, it fired up and stayed lighted up as normal. In five additional tests, it fired up normally every time. Now I can't get it to fail, but that doesn't change the fact that it did fail - five times.

I'll call Cory tomorrow, but in the mean time, any thoughts?

 

[JeffG]

I'll call Cory tomorrow, but in the mean time, any thoughts?

Other than...I did see it once with a buddies light.

 

[riguerin]

Sounds familiar ... except that mine is brand new and has like 10 dives on it. It's failed about 5 minuted into the dive on the past 3 night dives in a row. One as we were doing an open water swim across the Scripps Canyon at 110 fsw ... with the bottom @200+ ft below.

Based on feedback from some experienced owners, I initially thought it could be a bad battery or ballast. However, after a little trouble shooting with the assistance of Milo (ScubaMilo) and Chris (FishTaco), it's looking like we may have isolated the problem to poor wire splice in the lid. We got it to repeatedly fail in the shop by moving the wire splice. It's on it's way back to Salvo as write I this.

 

[JeffG]

Sounds familiar ... except that mine is brand new and has like 10 dives on it. It's failed about 5 minuted into the dive on the past 3 night dives in a row. One as we were doing an open water swim across the Scripps Canyon at 110 fsw ... with the bottom @200+ ft below.

Based on feedback from some experienced owners, I initially thought it could be a bad battery or ballast. However, after a little trouble shooting whit the assistance of Milo (ScubaMilo) and Chris (FishTaco), it's looking like we may have isolated the problem to poor wire splice in the lid. We got it to repeatedly fail in the shop by moving the wire splice. It's on it's way back to Salvo as write this.

I do know that the original wires in my Salvo, sucked. (cracking/breaking) I didn't send it back though. Over time I replaced them myself.

 

[Rick Inman]

Good thought. I repaired one of the wires with a piece of duct tape about 60 dives ago. Either way, I need to replace that wire.

 

[riguerin]

Good thought. I repaired one of the wires with a piece of duct tape about 60 dives ago. Either way, I need to replace that wire.

Rick, your problem could be anything. If you want to troubleshoot this yourself, then developing and following some kind of systematic approach is key. Being able to reproduce the failure is best.

I was lucky, I had access to working light (Milo's) and didn't have top go too far down the troubleshooting tree. Here are the basic steps we went through:

First we tried to determine if the charger was good. Verifying the correct battery voltage range with a multi-meter after the charge helped rule this out.

Next, we tried to determine if the there was a problem with the wiring. We opened up the can and started gently flexing wires ... starting with the main chord. When we got in the vicinity of the Anderson connector, we got it to fail intermittently.

We still hadn't ruled out that the battery was bad ... albeit, the voltage level still checked OK on the meter. We connected the head to a different battery (known to be good) and were again able to reproduce the failure by gently pushing on the wires near the Anderson connector. That seemed to rule out the battery.

Next, we opened up the lid and visually inspected the wiring. We noticed an obvious possible failure point, a wire spice. We flexed it ... the light failed repeatedly. We swapped back to the original battery ... flexed the splice ... it again failed repeatedly.

So, we have a good idea that the problem is associated with wiring. We suspect that the failure could be induced by some mechanical movement (i.e. battery shifting inside cannister during dive) and/or possible temperature (metal inside spice contracting with cooler UW temps).

Not sure if any of this helps you ... good luck !

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

21W Salvo HID

Well, I just took care of the battery issue a few dives ago, and now I have another problem.

I had 5 miss-fires in a row. In almost 200 dives, I've had maybe two miss-fires, and not in a row. And tonight I had FIVE! It would start to come on, brightening up for maybe 5 seconds, and then go black. Same way every time.

On the sixth try, it fired up and stayed lighted up as normal. In five additional tests, it fired up normally every time. Now I can't get it to fail, but that doesn't change the fact that it did fail - five times.

I'll call Cory tomorrow, but in the mean time, any thoughts?

Last time I flooded a light (my old Halcyoff) I started having all sorts of intermittent issues. Turned out that once the water got inside the canister it found all sorts of things to corrode.

I would send the light head assembly back to Salvo where they can do a proper job of troubleshooting the problem ... otherwise, you may "fix" one problem only to have another one show up ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)