Date:         Wed, 23 Nov 2005 19:55:12 -0500
Reply-To:     Wesley Pegden <wes@CS.UCHICAGO.EDU>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Wesley Pegden <wes@CS.UCHICAGO.EDU>
Subject:      headlight relay installation problems...
In-Reply-To:  <BAY101-F40CD6B3288D777F22C9877A0550@phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Hi guys,
I'm putting in relays for the headlights in my '84.  I'm experiencing
some strange behavior, and am afraid I  have shorted something out (but
maybe not, then again).

To install the relays, I cut the low and high beam wires (on my '84,
these are yellow-and-black and white-and-black, if I've done this
right), between the headlight (dimmer) switch and the turn signal/high
beam wand to the left of the steering wheel.  If I twist these wires
back together, everything works.  If I hook them all up to the relays
(which I believe are correctly grounded and powered) then only the high
beams work (but they really work: i.e, they stay on, whereas with both
of these wires cut, the high beams will flash when you pull the wand,
but not stay).  If I run just the high beam wires through one of the
relays, but twist the low-beam (yellow-and-black) wires together,
everything works, REGARDLESS of which relay the white-and-black wires
run through (Which is why I suspect the relays are okay).  On the other
hand, in any configuration where the yellow-and-black wires go through a
relay, I can't get the low beams to work.

Other possibly strange  behavior:  To get the low-beams to work, I need
to twist together both sets of wires, whereas for the high beams, just
twisting together the high-beam (white-and-black) wires is enough.

Have I perhaps used the wrong wires?  There's a white wire coming out
the signal wand... should I have used that instead of the
white-and-black wire?

Thanks for any help, guys.

-Wes