Another Petzl Myo XP repair

As I've said before, my Myo XP was a ticking bomb waiting to blow after the last repair. Just like my NiteRider I was in a mountain trip when it failed.

I knew it from the start that it was the cable connecting the battery compartment to the light head. I twisted it around a little and got some mixed results but in the end it died completely. Back in the office turned on the lamp, grabbed my tools and got to some serious tearing apart. The light head wasn't anything new but it was a first timer for the battery compartment. I was surprised to find in there a fuse that was actually blown out from my screwing around back on the mountain.

A fuse can be seen at the left end of the red wire

Didn't bother to dig into the problem that much and just took off the old cable. Unfortunately it's not an easy kind of cable to find so I had to improvise and use an electrical outlet cord. I could have found thinner alternatives but I wanted a decent cross section for low voltage drops and increased stiffness. It's left to see how well the new cable will hold up with low temperates and mountaineering abuse.
This is what came of it:

Final "masterpiece" after cable replacement

Petzl Myo XP repair

My first headlight was the Petzl Myo XP and I loved it from the beginning. Very well designed and build with little things to pick on.

I was pretty amazed when after 1 year of use my headlight broke down experiencing cable problems on the side where the cable enters the light head. Didn't thought much about it and put it all on a bad production sample, just returned the product to the store and got a brand new one instead. I've got mine from a local supplier, Himalaya, having luck on my side as there the guys are big and serious about their business with all interest in keeping a good name about the products they promote.

All was back on track again till 1 year after when this 2nd headlamp failed with same symptoms. This time I was more than intrigued and determined to get tot he bottom of it on my own.

There's nothing you can't do with the right tools so with a T6 torx it was all pieces on my worktable in no time. As I was anticipating, the good design from the outside was found inside as well. The LED chip is mounted on a separate PCB that has an extra aluminum radiator for efficient heat dissipation. Even more, a thermal probe is mounted on the heat-sink for thermal shutdown protection.

The LED chip looks like a Cree product but I might be mistaken. All looked fine with the solder points but with a multimeter I found my problem to be inside the cable. Only solution now was stripping it apart little by little.

Need I say my surprise when finding the inner conductors? I couldn't believe my eyes, finding the wires in such a bad shape for such a high overall quality product. It looks like the wires suffered severe aging problems from low temperature exposures, at least that's the only thing that makes sense to me. The isolation layer lost it's elastic properties and cracked all around in multiple places. One of them got more mechanical stress than the others and that's how the electrical link failed.

The only thing I could do in this case was to cut away the most exposed part of the cable and resolder it to the PCB. Of course it got shorter in the process, of course I didn't solve the problem, just the effect but for now it will have to do.

UPDATE: Another Petzl Myo XP repair