nwehtje944

oh, one last thing

this is what you call the pigtail right?



weg

Martin

Can only be in the wiring, as the switch is before the fuse and feeds it, check the diagram on the page I mentioned above and you will see that it is a simple circuit after the fuse. check the entire length of the wiring from the fuse box to the head lamp.

IceShark

You have finally worked the short bad enough for it to short all the time. No engine vibration needed.

Yes, that is the pigtail. But that one looks too short, no pun , in other words the rest of the wiring harness that it is connected to flexes when you raise and lower the headlights. That is first place to look. Just strip back the covering until a fixed body support and look for a break. You can recover with heat shrink.

Next place to look is under fuse box and where it comes through firewall. Or anywhere you have had worked around along the wiring to headlight. Someplace you may have smacked the wiring real hard by accident.

I think you can see where this is going and if all this searching fails you can just do a rewire upgrade. This would entail putting in a relay down by the headlight buckets driven by the left working headlight lead. For light power run a fat positive off the alternator, or battery, then fuse, then to relay, then a #10 gauge over to the respective headlights.

Frankly, that is what I would do without searching, except for the fact that this short problem may be around other feeds and have cut them too, just not as bad yet.

TLMikey

Was this ever resolved? Where was the short? Anybody experience the same thing? It looks like I have the exact same problem now too. Passenger side, low beam blowing fuses. Pigtails are fine. I'm going to have to trace the wiring it looks like. I was just hoping for a general area to look in.

nwehtje944

yes, I did get it figured out. I had a short in the wiring somewhere. I trace the wiring all the back to the fuse box, and even took pulled the fuse box out without any luck finding the short. and when I mean pulled, I meam pulled, it was very hard getting the fuse box out, a whole lot of wires. I was wanting to put in some more powerful bulbs someday(like 80/100 etc), so I figured that I would add some relays while I was at it. I got two relays, one for the low beam and one for high beam at autozone. like $3.00 each. a 30amp fuse wire, (don't know what to call it) for like $1.30 and a ton of 12 and 10 wire.

it wasn't too bad, the installation. it took the most of a day, but usually don't get up on the weekends till 1:00 or so in the afternoon, and I was tring to keep everything neat.

what I did was used the good side as the input for the relays, and the fuse power from the battery, and ran the ground to the grounding point near the right headlight. the relays had two outputs each, one for each light.
If you have anyother questions about this email me.
wehtjns@auburn.edu or wegie944@hotmail.com


nathan wehtje (wegie)
some pics
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the week end, after I make sure everything it going to work, I'm going to cover all the wiring.


and just for fun, this is a real sign I saw in colubus, ga

Tabor

Good for you! Your wiring looks a lot more professional than mine!

IceShark

Wegie, you might want to check and see what the voltage drop is down to the headlights with your setup. Your's will be *much* better than factory, but what I would have done, as long as you are going to the trouble, is to run a single #4 or #6 gauge from battery down to front of car. Mount relays and feed them there. Then your individual wires to lights.

And you could use that #4 supply to drive your fogs/driving lights in the same way.

I could look up the voltage delivery differences, but a single heavy delivery wire would be neater. You can get heavy stuff at a local welding supply house.

And I don't like the way you have that single 10 (?) gauge delivering power from the battery. It is sort of a power drop, but more important it goes over the edge of the sheet metal under the hood sealing strip. That may wear through the insulation and you might lose all lights at night while driving. Not good.

You want to punch a hole through the secondary firewall, put in a rubber grommet, and run the wire through that.

And slap some dielectric grease and tape up the bottom of the relays. Those connectors will corrode like crazy if left open.

nwehtje944

thanks for the information,

I was planing to make some changes anyways this weekend, bcs I don't have anytime right now. the way that I wired up the car, was mostly to see if it would work. I was planing to clean up the wiring some, after I was happy that what I did was going to work and would stand the test of time.
the reason that I put the relays where they are, is bcs there is a nice little bolt that comes thur the body of the car, and I could esily bot the relays to. I was tring to keep everything as oem as I could, including not addding anymore holes to the car.
and I didn't know were to mount the relays
, were they would be nearer to the lights.

I may go back and move the relays behind the bumper, or somewere like like

I may even get a little box to put the relays in, to protect them and the the wiring from water, heat etc

I'm going to changed the wiring from the battery, and do a better job of running the power wiring. I'm also going to try and protect the wiring and the relays from the heat of the engine.


wegie

IceShark

Wegie, Don't worry about protecting the wiring from heat the way you are running the course. You are just fine. Be more concerned about abrasion.

The plastic box for relays and fuses is what I did. Stole two small tupperware ones from my girlfriend. You need to get really small ones to fit down by the headlights and still be easy to get to if you blow a relay or fuse. And be careful drilling holes through the sides, tupperware likes to catch and fracture with a standard drill bit.

You may also wish to think about taking power directly off the alternator, which is what I did. And pay attention to those voltage measurements down on the light bulbs. Light output changes at about the cube power for voltage changes. So if your voltage drops from 13.5v @ 100% light output, you will only get 67% output if your voltage at the light is 12.2v. This becomes a big issue when you go to 100 watt bulbs. In some OEM wiring cases they will actually be no improvement over 55 watt due to voltage drop.

Racer X

hey guy had the same problem came to find out it was a short right were that pigtail connects withthe one coming from the body of the car pull back the proctective sheath the black or beige color i think then right where the headlight went up and down it was being pinched by the headlight mechanism but could not see it until you pull back that sheath then i saw where 2 wires were severd and touching hence the blown fuse hope this help if you need a little more detail give me a hit

racer x

TLMikey

Just wanted to update everyone. I finally got around to fixing this. I zip tie on the wiring of the passenger light near the pigtail, the one that holds it against a metal rail. Then I straightened the wire and put another fuse in the fuse box. Guess what....it didn't short. So i pinched the wires by hand until I found the short. Sure enough it was about 4 inches back of the pigtail connector(on the body side of the pigtail, heading towards the drivers side). Anyways, the yellow and brown wires had lost their sheath and had been pinched together along with part of the white wire. I resoldered the connections and shrink wrapped them. All is well now....lighting is back up and running.

nwehtje944

that good to hear. you had a better time than I did. I took most of the wiring out of the car and looked all over it to find a break. I never did find a short in the wiring, but oh well.

I was plaining to upgrade the lights some day any way and now I have all the relay stuff done.

nathan