I've had a Rennbay harness for about a year and it's been great...up until now. I drove to rehearsal tonight with my headlights on...no problem. Tried to turn them back on to leave rehearsal, nothing happens. No high beams, either. Got home and took a look - the inline fuse appears to be fine, if I hook the lights back up to their stock connectors they work fine (which I'm doing for now). Can both relays die at the same time? What else can I check?

 

Doesnt the harness connect to the back of the alternator?

Can you make sure the ground and power to the harness are in tact and havent backed out?

 

I would check your grounds, then check the signal lead connector.

 

Ground is fine. Haven't looked at the lead off the alternator. Guess I'll pull the airbox off and look.

 

Anyone happen to know exactly what relays are in the harness?

 

Why don't you just call rennbay?

 

Because I'm on the phone at work but I can talk and type at the same time. That and Trav is East Coast, so by the time I can call, he's gone for the day (at least, I hope so).

 

Rennbay sells the replacement relays, i had a hard time finding the relays when i made mine. You could bring in the old relays to NAPA or Schucks and they can order you new ones. I doubt that both relays would die at exactly the same time though. check all the connectors first.

 

Yeah, I find both relays kicking the bucket at the same time odd, but I'm not sure. Guess I'll take the airbox out tonight and see if I've got melted wires. If they're not, I'll order new ones from rennbay, but what am I missing? I mean, battery is still charging when car's on (after my last headlight debacle, that was the first thing I checked). Lights work fine as the original wiring is hooked up and working right now, so it's not those wires or the fuses in the cabin. Should I be able to get some sort of reading with a voltmeter in the housing of the fuse? Ultimately it sounds like the harness to me; I guess the relays seemed more plausible than the wire on the alternator. *shrug*

 

If they're the same Hella relays that Iceshark used, they're pretty crappy. Mine went bad after little over a year.

I'll see if I still have them somewhere to get you the part numbers, but I replaced them with new German made WEHRLE relays 2 years ago and haven't had any more issues.

Don't know if you can get these in the U.S., but the WEHRLE part number is: 20.207.100

HTH

P.S. EDIT - I just found the Iceshark kit relays and they are indeed Hella. The numbers on them are:

12V
4RD
960 388-15
25530904

 

Thanks Luis. I'll know more in an hour or two when I get home and pull the airbox to see what the 12v lead from the alternator looks like.

 

So, it wasn't the relays...Andy, I owe you a beer (in a few years ). Looks like the lead on the alternator wasn't as tight (or something) as it should have been. Took all of those off, cleaned the threads of the peg, the connectors, and the nuts, put it all back on...voila, light!

Thank God. The stock connectors are the dimmest thing I've ever seen.

I just wish there was a smaller connector on the alternator lead for the harness - it's too big for the peg on my alternator.

 

Just put a new connector in. It takes like 5 minutes to splice one in.

 

We ran into that problem because some of the late alternators have a larger lug. We went with what will fit all of them. You should put the power lug to the lights under your main pos connector or put a washer on top of it before the nut.

 

Wow thats customer service!