How to fix a headlight.. or perhaps not
Posted: Mon May 30, 2016 9:26 pm
Just thought for the sake of wider education I thought I'd share an experience. Some months ago, after a small wiring job, I blew a headlight. I might have shorted it out after forgetting to disconnect the battery at one point - but lets not dwell on that particular idiocy.
The headlight didn't work and I noticed that the other wouldn't shift from high to low beam. After a bit of googling I found some evidence which suggested the problem might be a burned out headlight relay so I ordered one on line from the states. In the mean time I also purchased a replacement sealed beam unit.
Once the relay arrived I replaced the headlight and the relay, only to discover that the only improvement was that the new headlight was very dim. An improvement, but not much of one.
More googling and I found that the issue might be a bad connector for the headlight switch. I took this out and found it had the hallmarks described (slighty brown connectors) but no matter what I did it didn't improve the situation.
So, back to Google. After some more searching I found a reference to a possibility that the fuse (for that headlight) might be blown, but only partially. I was a bit skeptical as in my experience they're either blown or not. I don't think I've ever had a half-arsed blown fuse.
Nevertheless, a quick inspection found that this was indeed the case. Off to Supercheap to buy a new fuse and what do you know, everything worked fine, even when I used the original headlight relay.
So I think I spent about $50 for what was probably only a $1 fix. Still, now I have a spare
Anyway, in case anyone has a similar situation I hope there are some learnings here.
Billy
The headlight didn't work and I noticed that the other wouldn't shift from high to low beam. After a bit of googling I found some evidence which suggested the problem might be a burned out headlight relay so I ordered one on line from the states. In the mean time I also purchased a replacement sealed beam unit.
Once the relay arrived I replaced the headlight and the relay, only to discover that the only improvement was that the new headlight was very dim. An improvement, but not much of one.
More googling and I found that the issue might be a bad connector for the headlight switch. I took this out and found it had the hallmarks described (slighty brown connectors) but no matter what I did it didn't improve the situation.
So, back to Google. After some more searching I found a reference to a possibility that the fuse (for that headlight) might be blown, but only partially. I was a bit skeptical as in my experience they're either blown or not. I don't think I've ever had a half-arsed blown fuse.
Nevertheless, a quick inspection found that this was indeed the case. Off to Supercheap to buy a new fuse and what do you know, everything worked fine, even when I used the original headlight relay.
So I think I spent about $50 for what was probably only a $1 fix. Still, now I have a spare
Anyway, in case anyone has a similar situation I hope there are some learnings here.
Billy