Headlight Question

[why3zx]

ok, new to the forum, question for the gurus (although it probably wont take a guru)

 

bought a beater 94 SE for a hunting rig, 174k on the clock, man trans, and man i am impressed as hell with this little rig, runs like a top and its nice to have a light short wheelbase 4x4 again.

 

now i am working on fixing the bugs are repairing the POs hack jobs, however noticed i only had one bright, well no brainer, picked up a set of bulbs and popped them in and viola!!! sh*t.... nothing. left headlight, low beam works, high does not.

 

so i checked the incoming wires, just as i figured, voltage to the low, nothing to the high, ground is good. pins in plug seem to be fine. i have read that there isnt any healight relays in the system, and that all voltage come directly from the multi switch on the coloum, so why does the pass side work? can there be seperate contacts in the switch for the different sides, brights and dims? that doesnt seem very logical? (however after seeing the wire color coding used i am not sure the electrical engineers here had logic in the forefront of their minds) and i did notice that the left and right headlight were fused seperate so ??

 

anyway, thanks in advance!

[Kingman]

I've been dealing with no brights on my rig too. No brights at all, but good low beams. Voltage on both low and high beams, but high beams are not at their full potential and no now power up.

 

You are correct, there are no relays in the headlight system, just the stalk on the column.

 

On the socket for the lights, the middle is the low beam, the one of the left (I think) is the high beam, and the right is the ground. That could be backwards. I also read somewhere about a crossover wire that connects the two headlights together somehow, but I don't remember what it's for or if it's even factory.

[RedPath88]

Each beam of each light has it's own electrical path through the switch. So yes you can loose just one beam (high or low) in just one light... or any and all combination's of beams/lights.

 

I hassled with it for a while by taking the switch out and cleaning & "tweaking" the contacts so they would work again. But after several times doing it in just a couple months I finally just bought a new one and have had no trouble since.

 

But since the full power runs through the switch it's just a matter of time before a new switch starts to do the same thing again.

 

With that said I suggest that you consider this headlight modification:

Headlights performing poorly?

[92Pathmaker]

I cleaned the contacts in my switch and brights work great. Sometimes only one will come on so I just switch it off then on again and all good. I would try just cleaning it first since a new one is like $50

[why3zx]

hey, thanks guys, i think im just gonna hit up the parts store tomorrow and wire in a couple of relays, was thinking about doing this anyway, without really thinking about the fact that it might give me a better light output. icing on the cake.

[92Pathmaker]

I wired in relays for my low beams, but not yet for the highs. Now they are pretty much the same brightness. It was well worth the few dollars

[why3zx]

so, to anyone on this forum that hasnt done it, DO IT! took me 45min, was able to scrounge all of the parts and wires from the parts bin, made a day/night (haha) diff in the headlight brightness. very good upgrade!