Both headlights stopped working, DRLs still work

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Nose Nuggets

Nose Nuggets

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Mar 12, 2022
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about a year or so back i got frustrated with the generally low performance of the standard headlights and had a shop that specializes in LCs nearby do an HID upgrade. They installed "innovited hid xenon ballast 55w" kit, they said this was a product they were familiar with and had done the swap before. They worked great initially, they looked like they were aimed correctly and all that and were a serious improvement.

Cut to last night, turned on the truck, flipped on the headlights and i think they flashes on for a second and went out. All the other lights, DRLs, blinkers etc all work fine.

I visually inspected the wiring, ballasts, etc, nothing obviously wrong. Checked the 2x 10amp headlight fuses under the hood, still look fine as well. Seems odd they would both fail at the same time.

any recommendations on troubleshooting? I'll call them when they open on monday, but they are 3 hours away from where i live now so taking the truck back to them would be a hassle. was hoping i could figure it out myself.
 
thanks, i'll add that to the troubleshooting list. dont have any spares at the moment, though. i could probably pull the connector out and put a multimeter in there, though.
 
Could be as simple as the relay in the HID wiring kit.
 
Last edited:
TLCPNW said:
Could be a simple as the relay in the HID wiring kit.
Click to expand...
see, that's what i thought as well. But i was looking at the device and the diagram from the vendor, but it doesn't look like there is one. It looks like it plugs into the normal headlight harness and nothing else.
2025-10-18 21_03_39-Photo - Google Photos — Mozilla Firefox.webp
 
A little while back i posted asking for some help with some headlight issues.

Trunk Monkey's opinion was well stated and that's the path i decided to take. The thing hadn't had a full eval in a while anyway so i took it to a local shop to give it a good once-through and take out the HID kit and pop some regular bulbs back in. After taking a swing at it, here where it stands

  1. Now the DRL's don't turn on at all, they did with the hid kit installed while the hid's worked and after it broke
  2. The fog lights still don't work
  3. High beams don't work (i assume related to whatever caused the DRL's to fail, i think the DRLs are just the high beam bulbs at low power?)
  4. When the light stalk on the steering wheel is in the off position, the headlights are on (most of the time)
  5. When the stalk is in the on position, they are off
  6. When in the automatic position, they are sometimes on. It seems to work once. if you switch it from off, to on, to auto they come on. Then you go back to on (no lights) and off (lights on) then back to auto, they don't come back on even in my dark garage.
Initially they said it was probably the fusable link, but they tested that today and it tested fine. Now they are saying they think its a headlight relay.

In my head, a relay doesn't make much sense given the verity of issues. A relay is like a switch, right? It's either on or off. If it was bad, my assumption would be the lights dont work at all.

I don't get how pulling the HID kit could break the DRL's.

I asked, can't you just pull the relay and test that independently to confirm it is in fact broken instead of waiting another day for that part, but they said they can't. Can't you put a MM on a relay and make sure it's not stuck open, and then put a 12v bat on it with the MM and confirm correct voltage? This seems simple in my head but maybe i don't know what the hell i'm talking about.

Any ideas?
 
The low beams do work, but only when the control stalk (on the steering wheel) is in the off position.

haven't touched the high beam bulbs yet, they currently don't work. They did work before this fiasco started, though.

I called the guys that installed the HID kit, and they did say they had to swap in the pins in the connector because the kit expects the orientation to to inverted. Still doesn't explain the DRLs, fogs, or the high beams.
 
Nose Nuggets said:
The low beams do work, but only when the control stalk (on the steering wheel) is in the off position.

haven't touched the high beam bulbs yet, they currently don't work. They did work before this fiasco started, though.

I called the guys that installed the HID kit, and they did say they had to swap in the pins in the connector because the kit expects the orientation to to inverted. Still doesn't explain the DRLs, fogs, or the high beams.
Click to expand...
Sounds like they messed up when they were swapping pins.
 
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