headlights update

djpink1947

djpink1947

Member
Well I worked on the headlights of my car for about a hour and a half. I found that I have three wires in the headlight bucket. I narrowed them down. Now these are the wires that are in MY car. Remember now, this thing is 56 years old and how people have been there before me. I found that I have a green wire with black tracer were the high beams I found that the red wire with black tracer was the low beams. I took my light and turned on the high beams and the light lit when I grounded it to the body. I did the same with the low beam side and they light lit. Now, I thought what everyone said I could have a bad ground. I took a paper clip and put it in the socket where the black wire was and turned on the lights again and did the same test as before except I grounded the test light to the headlight ground in the socket and got light from the test light. both from the high beam side and the low beam side. I've got to be getting juice to the headlights, but they just don't light until I put them on high beam. Anymore ideas out there???????????? Dave
 
If you think the ground is the middle wire, you are wrong. Ask me how I know!!!!. The bad thing is I do not remember which side wire is the ground.
 
The low beam is in the middle(it's the red wire) and the high beam is the green wire. The color wire that I put the paper clip in was black. I took one of the headlights and hooked up my battery charger to it using the ground on the light and it lit..........
 
You can use your headlight as a test light with a couple jumper wires. Remove the socket from the bulb. Run one jumper from the known ground terminal on the bulb to a frame ground and with the lights turned on, the other jumper to from the socket terminal ( one should be hot) to the each of the other 2 bulb terminals. Light up on both terminals means the bulb is good. Now hit the dimmer switch. The socket terminal you just used should be dead and the other one hot. Retest the bulb. You only need to try one of the bulb leads now that you know the bulb works. That will tell you if you're getting power through the harness. You know the ground wire works because the high beams work and they use the same ground.

Did these cars use a light relay? If it does, it may be weak on the low side and be enough for a test light but not the amp draw of the headlight itself. Also light wires often come up one side of the car and use a connector harness for the other side. A poor connection at that point may also be the problem.
 
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