Goodbye condensation!

For the longest time now, my rear left light has been carrying around water. Not just a little bit either, its basically been 1/3 full of the stuff. This was also causing condensation resulting in a very dim and not very pretty rear light.

Finally on Monday, I decided to get the tools at the car and take it out to see if I could get some of the water out of the light somehow. This was actually easy enough. Probably took about 10 minutes as I wasn't so sure what I was doing the first time. The second the light came out I spilled water on my shoes - it was that full!

After removing the bulbs and shaking the thing about for a while I had most of the water out.. Unfortunately, there was still water inside that I just couldn't get out and the light was still full of condensation. I decided to bring it inside and leave it in front of the de-humidifier for some time to see what would happen.

After about an hour most of the condensation was gone! Yeah!!! But there was still a lot of water inside. Nothing for it but to keep going. Finally after about 24 hours, not a drop of water remains in the light. Its all gone!!!

I cleaned the gasket off a little bit and cleaned off some dirt and finally connected it all back up to the car again tonight (in the dark!!!). Yep - its that easy a job. I guess it might start to collect water again at some stage but at least I have a work around now. Mazda wanted nearly 20,000 yen for a new assembly! If it fills again, I'll just try a new gasket after the same procedure.