So what happens when Water gets in to DB9 or any AM tail light ? can it dry and still work? Probably not and I will show you why.

These are the parts which makes your tail light assembly. See pic "parts"
Once water gets in it its more likely that it will fry the circuit board see pic Water damaged circuit board" mine was fried.

So I Presume you already know how to remove tail light

pretty easy, remove trunk weather seal rubber trim in corner where tail light is.
push trunk liner out of the way.
remove 3 large nuts and then you should be able to remove the tail light off the car (unhook electric cable and you will havre to separate rubber seal strips form tail light)

Trick on saving tabs (heat them with heat gun whenever you want to unclip the tabs , I learned that hardware, broke 2 of 5)

1. You will have to bake the light, don't be afraid, these lights are sturdy, they can take 200 degree F for 20-30 min easily.
2. Pre heat oven at 200 degree F (very improtant as if you put light during pre heat temp is actually higher and you will have melted components in light)
3. Remove all the screws (there are 3) in back of tail light. these screws hold Inside Silver panel housing to black housing.

4. Put light in oven after pre heat is done for 25 min ( I think 30 min might make separating tail light much easier but i have not tried it). This is a tedious process. I had to do this multiple times.
5. Every time its heated, take it out, use razor blade or artist knife and try to separate the glue you may have to jab pointed razor blade in the joint to cut the glue.
6. I also used plastic trim tool to separate two pieces of light.
7. Once light was separated, I used heat gun and removed as much old black glue remove as much as possible.

You could use Oven to heat the light too but I used Heat gun for this process much faster. If plastic piece starts getting deformed due to heat and while removing glue (use flathead screwdriver small size to push the glue, start on side wall top part, push the glue down, once bit of glue string is generated, hold the glue string, pulll it and at same time use flat head screw driver to push the glue), just reheat that area and plastic lip will go back to original shape and not you could push it in to correction shape and position.


I bought a partly broken tail light from ebay for $ 60 and used Mother board from it to transplant in to my car's tail light.

With water I don't think LED it self gets damaged but I could not test it, as while remove mother board I tore the electronic ribbon connector so I had to use LED panel form donor too.
Putting it back is as per multiple videos on line I used Retrorubber Resealing Glue. Just google videos for resealing headlight.

 

 

forgot to mention that there are 2 aluminum rivets, which has to be drilled and removed if one wants to remove LED panel it self. I just use zip ties to tie it back instead of putting in rivets. there is lot of room in the back of silver panel and between black housing.