Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2003 11:23:36 -0600
Reply-To: mostd@JUNO.COM
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: David Most <mostd@JUNO.COM>
Subject: problem SOLVED! Re: headlights not working after towing?
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Here's the short version of the solution: GROUND WIRE (a familiar theme
over the years on this list).
The details should be useful for the future, so let me share my amateur
perspective. The symptoms were headlights not coming on AND high beam
indicator constantly on (both with headlight switch on and ignition
switch on). All other electrical appliances were working, including
those powered by load reduction relay. Again, unless I've been misled, a
failure of the ignition switch would cause all appliances powered by the
load reduction relay to be nonoperative. I don't know what symptoms a
bad headlight switch would exhibit.
As Dennis correctly surmised, the high beam indicator was trying to be
the ground path for the low beams. Fred correctly identified the exact
location of the ground wire problem. That is, behind the fuse box, which
can be lowered by removing one screw, there are two clusters of ground
terminals along the fire wall. The front cluster (toward the front of
the vehicle) has the grounds for the headlights. I moved one ground wire
at a time to the rear cluster, each time checking the headlights, and on
the second try I had lights! I picked the wires that looked a little
easier to reach at first and that also looked a bit corroded.
In retrospect, I'm reasonably sure that the towing was irrelevant.
Rather, leaving the vent window ajar too many times in New Orleans led to
water following the extreme driver's side of the dash down toward the
ground clusters behind the fuse box. Perhaps the rust/corrosion would
develop in that location anyway, but the evidence is quite suggestive.
I'd like to get some recommendations on how to properly clean those
ground terminals. The connectors are rather small, and I'm not sure how
to access all of the contact surface area. I didn't do any
cleaning....just put the ground wires in new positions on the other
ground cluster. Any good ideas here?
In the end, fixing the problem took 5 minutes. I would never have
figured things out without the help of all those who responded.
Thank you all for your help.
David
'87 westy out of the dark
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