Headlight high beam wiring question

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T

t00manyuserz

10 Year
Joined
Jan 5, 2016
Threads
43
Messages
253
Location
Canada/Japan
Hi all,

Trying to wrap my head around headlight wiring. OEM, my 80 has Gulf headlights which have 4 bulbs (but not the square lights): outer have a low and a high setting, and inner have high. I need to use RHD headlights with fog on the inners. Currently, my headlight stalk works as follows:

- lights on, stalk neutral: outer bulbs low, inner off
- pull stalk in: outer go bright, inner go on
- push stalk out: outer turn off, inner go on

When installing RHD headlights, what this means is that if I push the stalk away, the headlights completely switch off (since I guess it's expecting to send signal only to inner bulbs). I want to (reversibly) rewire the headlights so that I can push and pull for outers to go bright; inners can remain as they are today, I do not need to de-wire them. Can anyone suggest where to look?
 
Wait, your location says Canada... Is that what you're adapting it to? The terminology can be imprecise on this stuff, but RHD generally refers to driver's seat on the right hand of the vehicle (and drive on the left side of the road), like Britain, Australia, Japan, so I would expect you to be setting it up for Canada with LEFT hand drive headlights.
 
Marvelicious said:
Wait, your location says Canada... Is that what you're adapting it to? The terminology can be imprecise on this stuff, but RHD generally refers to driver's seat on the right hand of the vehicle (and drive on the left side of the road), like Britain, Australia, Japan, so I would expect you to be setting it up for Canada with LEFT hand drive headlights.
Click to expand...
Ah sorry! This is for a Gulf 80 imported to Japan, so LHD car in Japan, using Japanese physical headlight units (to respond to RHD traffic geometry).
 
That makes a lot more sense! I'm not really much help sorting through the description: I can look at a wiring diagram and see what's happening, but I just get turned around in a description. If you can get the EWD (wiring diagram) for both versions, it should be simple enough to figure out what you need. I know we have the north american version of the EWD in the resource section, but it doesn't seem like that's quite like the Gulf version if I'm understanding correctly.
 
Marvelicious said:
That makes a lot more sense! I'm not really much help sorting through the description: I can look at a wiring diagram and see what's happening, but I just get turned around in a description. If you can get the EWD (wiring diagram) for both versions, it should be simple enough to figure out what you need. I know we have the north american version of the EWD in the resource section, but it doesn't seem like that's quite like the Gulf version if I'm understanding correctly.
Click to expand...
How do the low / high beams of the North American version operate?
 
The on/off switch when ON provides a ground to the relay coil, which sends 12v+ to the headlight fuses, and from there to high and low bulbs. The ground side of the low beams are grounded all the time. The ground side of the high beams goes back to the stalk switch which sends this to ground when in BRIGHT, or FLASH mode. In flash mode, there is also, an alternate path for the relay coil to ground (so that it will flash without the on/off switch ON).

Basically, the outer low beams are always on with the headlight switch, and the inner brights go on with BRIGHT or FLASH.

The stalk switch may be different for other configurations.
Headlight EWD.webp
 
Marvelicious said:
The on/off switch when ON provides a ground to the relay coil, which sends 12v+ to the headlight fuses, and from there to high and low bulbs. The ground side of the low beams are grounded all the time. The ground side of the high beams goes back to the stalk switch which sends this to ground when in BRIGHT, or FLASH mode. In flash mode, there is also, an alternate path for the relay coil to ground (so that it will flash without the on/off switch ON).

Basically, the outer low beams are always on with the headlight switch, and the inner brights go on with BRIGHT or FLASH.

The stalk switch may be different for other configurations.
Click to expand...
Ah cool, okay, thanks. I follow. But do the low beams change light patterns when "flash" vs "bright"? In the Gulf headlights case, the lows switch off when "bright", and go brighter when "flash". So I guess what I am looking to do is disable the "turn off when bright" state. I need to find the EWD for the GCC car...

... nice, @MVZ just found the GCC wiring! Thanks. The use case tables do seem to be different, eh?
 
Nope, at least on the later NA FZJ80, the outer lows are low, the inner highs are high. The lows stay on all the time.

The gulf version appears to be different.

You might reach out to @jcardona1 and ask if his harness would work for you. He's put more effort into working the different variations out than most folks. Especially since, if I understand correctly, you want something easily reversible. It should be doable to pop in a different set of housings and a couple adapter harnesses to get whatever you need, then swap back to original parts easily.
 
Anyone happen to know what T, EL, H and HF, HU, HL, ED mean in the above EWD for the switch positions?

[edit] it looks like, from a Subaru forum, ha:

HF - headlight flash
HU - headlight upper/high beam
HL - headlight lower/low beam

HC - headlight circuit
EL - earth

Leaves T and ED.
 
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