Date:         Sun, 18 May 2003 20:23:21 -0400
Reply-To:     Jeff Stewart <fonman4277@EARTHLINK.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Jeff Stewart <fonman4277@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject:      High Beam Indicator-Ya Gotta Be Kidding Me!!!
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

<SIGH> Another fun day. As I mentioned the other day, my '84 failed Virginia safety inspection on ball joints, side marker lamp, license plate lamp, and high beam indicator out. While I'm waiting for the ball joints to arrive from Bus Depot, I decide to attack the lights. License plate-no sweat, bad bulb. Ditto for the marker lamp, although the socket was corroded and needed a little cleaning. Now onto the high beam indicator. No problem I thought, last junk yard run I picked up a half dozen of those little dash light bulbs. But no, as I am to find, it aint a bulb at all, but a LED. But, the LED has only fallen out of it'd socket! I push the legs back in, and also end up knocking the battery LED indicator out of it's socket. I put it back in and put it all back together-time to test. Well, the Westy barely starts, almost like the battery is nearly dead (no problem before now. It starts, though, and now the battery indicator is on and still no high beam indicator. Take it all apart again, reverse the battery indicator LED and the high beam LED and put it all back together again. Now my battery won't even turn the engine over, have to jump it. Battery LED now goes out when started, but still no high beam indicator, and in fact now my left headlight is out on low beam- I'm not making progress here, I'm going backwards! After a few times of flipping the turn signal lever back and forth, my left headlight comes back, both low and high beam-but still no high beam indicator. Could the LED be bad? That's the only thing I can think of. And I'm baffled as to why my battery (which is only a few months old) suddenly dies during this episode. Can anyone offer any suggestions? TIA,  Jeff