TL;DR - The mounting bracket for Diode Dynamics SS5 pods has a design flaw, but the company did a great job standing behind their product.
As the sun set, we were still working our way east toward the starting point for the Montana Backcountry Discovery Route (MTBDR). Flipping on the hi-beams - which also automatically turns on the fabulous Diode Dynamics SS5 lights - both @mrs.turbodb and I noticed that the driver side LED seemed to be flickering. In fact, I was concerned enough that I pulled over to make sure that all the connections were solid (they were), and to see if I could wiggle the wires a bit to see the light flicker (I couldn't).
Not sure exactly what was going on - and not wanting to spend too much time on it, since we'd been driving for 11 hours - I decided to dig in more when we returned home from the adventure.
That is, until the next evening when we were eating dinner along a high ridge in the Gravelly Mountains, and I happened to wander around the front of the truck for a photo.
There, catawampus on the front bumper, was the SS5 light, secured only by the wiring harness!
The bracket securing the light had completely broken. Upon closer inspection, a weakness in the bracket design was immediately obvious: the Diode Dynamics logo. While it's super cool to have the logo cut into the bracket, it results in a portion of the bracket where there is very little metal. Over time, and on the type of terrain that the Tacoma frequents, the repeated momentum shifts - and resulting forces on the bracket - had caused the metal to fatigue and ultimately, break.
There was really only one solution in the moment, and after unplugging the light, we stashed it in rear passenger footwell for safekeeping.
Diode Dynamics: This is How Customer Service Should Be
With sunset just before 10:00pm, and sunrise just before 6:00am, being down an SS5 for the remainder of the trip wasn't a big deal at all, and when I got home, I fired off a quick email to Diode Dynamics that included my photos and an explanation of what happened.
In hours I got a reply, and a few hours after that - no questions asked - two new brackets were on the way. Turns out that a few race teams had alerted Diode Dynamics to this bracket design as well, and they'd already revised the bracket to remove the stress point. Naturally, they offered to send a pair of new brackets, since I still had the original - I was one of the first to put the SS5s into operation - design on the Tacoma.
A few days later the brackets arrived and in less than 10 minutes, the front bumper looked normal again. Now that's some awesome customer service, and one of the reasons I love supporting Diode Dynamics.
