Bright switch turns off lights completely....?

[markjs]

No fuses blown so far as I can tell, this is a crisis though because I NEED ths car to work and I NEED these brights to work by tonight or maybe I can't work tonight It's an 84 GL wagon 1800 FWD.

[85Sub4WD]

did you check the switch?? lights themselves?? (give 'em 12v, they light up??)

As you say it is an 84' I assume you mean that it uses 4 sealed beams??

 

if it's sealed beams, it should be easy enough to rig something with scrap wire and a few blade connectors....

[markjs]

Has to be the switch because the bulbs are fine (yes 4 single headlights). I have to take off the steering wheel to access that don't I? Never actually done that is it difficult? I have a temporary fix. I plugged in the passenger side bright bulb and the drive side dim so I get more reach with my lights but not as bad as with my brights on. I can live with that as long as no cop flashes me brights.

[eponodyne]

Re-aim your pax-side light toward the ditch a bit more and you should be able to get away with that until you track down the problem.

 

My first instinct is to blame the switch, assuming your wiring is stock. In the past on some of my Z-cars with electical trouble, I rewired headlights to an on-off-on 3-position toggle switch and bypassed that OEM POS switch entirely. It's pretty easy to do and hell for tough.

[stephenw22]

Have you checked the relays? They're up inside the dash. Normally, you either have your 2 driving lights OR 2 high beams on, never 4 at once. If the relay for the high beams was dead, you'd have a similar problem.

[TomRhere]

Actually, on a 4 light set-up, all 4 bulbs are on when the Brights are on.

 

Check for voltage at the bulbs with switch on in the normal position. Can't say which wire color to check, but one is low, one is bright, other is ground, this should be a Black wire, may have a colored stripe.

 

The headlight switch controls the grounding of the circuit, whether it's thru relays or not. So you should have battery voltage at the lights, even with lights off.

 

If you have voltage, and the switch is on, but no lights. Try a ground wire on the ground side of the lights. If they light, you have something wrong in the control circuit.

 

If they light when you try the ground, you can wire in a switch between headlights and ground to operate them until you find problem.

[stephenw22]

Maybe my old '88 DL was rewired at some point then (or Canadian models are different). It had the 4-light setup, and it was either highs or lows, not both.

 

If I held the switch in just the right spot (in between high and low settings), both sets would come on. Otherwise, it was only 2 bulbs on at a time.

 

EDIT: Didn't see it was an '84 - I don't know anything about the electricals on ea-81 models.