Date:         Sat, 18 Oct 2008 19:42:12 -0700
Reply-To:     Luke Bakken <luke.bakken@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Luke Bakken <luke.bakken@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      The drama continues -> Both low beams burnt out at same time?
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Well, things have just gotten more interesting.

I got my replacement bulbs in the mail yesterday, so I thought I would
go put them in and be done with everything. I went to move my van to
somewhere with better light and the battery was drained to the point
where it wouldn't start. Great!

I disconnected the negative and put in my volt meter and sure enough,
there is a short somewhere - it was reading 8 volts. I'm assuming that
this is most likely the cause of the bulb issue as well, hopefully.

I did take the screws out of the fuse/relay panel so I could check
wiring behind it - I was careful, but I'm concerned that moving that
mass of wires around could have caused the short.

I pulled the fuses one at a time to see what circuit the problem may
be on, but no luck. Being a Vanagon newbie, I'm not really familiar
with what circuits are live without the ignition in the 'on' position
- I figure it's the parking lights, radio (on my van) and other
things. I plan on studying the diagrams in my Bentley, but I'm hoping
other people on this list (and archive searches) can help me narrow
this down.

Thanks,
Luke

On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 2:45 PM, Luke Bakken <luke.bakken@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Vanagon list,
>
> I've been a lurker here since purchasing an '89 Westy Syncro last
> March and I've learned a LOT about my van just by following this list.
>
> A couple weeks ago my low beams both went out and I have just
> diagnosed the problem as *both* bulbs low-beam filaments gone bad. How
> common is this situation? The van has a Van-Cafe relay kit installed
> and I checked that out thoroughly with my voltage tester and
> everything appears to be working OK - the low beam filament gets power
> at the headlight bulb plug and then the high beam filament gets power
> when the high beams are turned on. I'm assuming the correct behavior
> is for the low beam side to switch off when the high beams come on.
>
> The main thing that I noticed while testing all this out is that there
> are two places where it appears that the circuit overheated. The first
> place is where the high-beam relay was spliced into the white wire
> between the high-beam switch and the fuse - the splice itself is
> browned a bit. The second place is on the neutral wire side of the
> left-front headlight plug - it is pretty blackened as well. When the
> van was upgraded with the relay kit and higher wattage bulbs should
> the plugs have been upgraded as well? The Van-Cafe web site mentions
> this: "We also recommend cleaning up ground connections for you
> headlight wiring harness as poor grounds are common cause of burnt
> wiring/connectors, whether using stock or high output bulbs." I'm
> assuming this could have been a cause of all this as well.
>
> http://www.van-cafe.com/home/van/page_451_584/hella_9004_80100_watt_low_beam.html
>
> Thanks a lot!
> Luke
>
> P.S. - who runs gerry.vanagon.com? I work as a professional software
> engineer and would be willing to help out with speeding up the vanagon
> search archives.
>