Headlight problem.....

lunyou · 05-26-07, 09:48 PM

Here is my problem....

My left headlight quit working on DIM....works fine on brights. But intermittenly it will come on when I switch between the two.

Another thing......during the same weekend that the light quick working my left horn quick working also(this happened 1 day after I noticed it quit)

Any ideas??

lunyou

dogboy2 · 05-26-07, 10:44 PM

sounds like a short.... the next best thing would be to grab a multimeter, a wiring diagram, and to dive in.

not fun I know... not only will you find your bad connection but you may discover some more electrical gremlins along the way. gotta love PO's hack jobs...

btdt,
-dogboy- '87 FJ60

lunyou · 05-27-07, 09:05 AM

man I was hoping for some clear cut solution....like a typical problem.

Believe it or not my PO is the greatest....he was an electronics specialist so I do not have the electrical birds nests and junk like that which some people get stuck with.

I just cant figure out why the Dim lights work once in a while and the brights work 100% of the time.

lunyou

agent orange · 05-27-07, 09:32 AM

Maybe the horn and light share a common ground.

lunyou · 05-27-07, 09:35 AM

that is what I was thinking but would the Dim have a different ground then the Brights??

lunyou

Dynosoar · 05-27-07, 10:35 AM

I bet the problems are unrelated. As for the lights take the switch apart and clean the contacts. There have been several posts about this topic (search). The horn problem is different. I would pull the plug and clean the contacts put some dielectric greese in there and you should be good for another 20 years.

Dynosoar

lunyou · 05-27-07, 01:03 PM

okay I will try that. on both the horn and the lights.

But here is another question that puzzles me. If it were the contacts in thw switch wouldn't both Dim lights quit working? I am not argueing.....just puzzled....I assumed the dim was burned out on the one light until a couple days ago when I turned my dims on and the left one came back on.

lunyou

Dynosoar · 05-27-07, 02:44 PM

Sorry Lunyou, I did not read your post clearly. You probably have a bad bulb. It is not totally uncommon for the filament in the bulb to break and intermittently reconnect. An easy test is turn on the low beams and go out and tap on the bulbs you will probably get it to flicker. Swap the bulb and all should be well.

Dynosoar

Marc311 · 05-27-07, 03:09 PM

The headlights and horn share the same power line (the red wire). My guess is it is a ground problem. The horn is ground switched, meaning the switch is after the load (the horn) and provides a ground when activated, rather than providing power. Since the switch is in the steering column, the ground must be there too. You may also want to look at the fusible link for the red power wire. I suppose if it is starting to fry, but not completely, it would give you some wierd issues.

Of course, I have no idea why it would only effect the left horn as both are on the same circuit.

The hazards also use that circuit - any issue with them?

lunyou · 05-27-07, 09:47 PM

Today I did some trouble shooting. Right now as it stands the Low tone horn(drivers side) doesn't work and the high tone(pass. side) works. So I removed the low tone horn and and connections were clean. I reconnected...nothing. So I switched them.....low to the high connector/high to low connector....the low tone still didn't work and the high tone worked on the drivers side(THIS ELIMINATES THE DRIVERS SIDE CONNECTOR)

Then I switch the horns back to normal position and the High tone still works and the Low tone still doesn't work. I am guessing that it is a bad horn which doesn't seem uncommon since my other fj60 has both horns badI tried putting the low tone from the chop top on SPEEDY and it didn't work either.)

The light worked all day today so I am leaving it alone and am going to try to get by without replacing it since I hope to be driving my chop top soon enough.

lunyou