Adventures with electrical fires and headlights

[dbenzmaine]

My main concern for today is making the clutch work, but i figure i'll tell another story and ask another question while i'm at it. The car is an 89 GL Hatch with EA-81 and about 207k on it.

 

I drove the car down to central america last year, and it performed like a champ. However, i only stayed a month before flying back to the states, and my brother got to play around in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico for the next six months. I was very jealous!

 

Anyway, i get an email from him one day saying that the car has been overheating and the thermoswitch isn't working. This happens all the time (i have bad luck with thermoswitches). He also said that he had wired the fan directly to the battery so that it would just stay on all the time. I wrote back saying that he really should put a switch in the circuit so that it wouldn't overhead and cause a fire.

 

I get an email the next day saying that before he had even gotten my reply, he had had an engine fire and had to be towed behind a big truck for about 8 hours in the mountains of Nicaragua. Anyway, he and a local mechanic replaced all of the burnt out electrical stuff and put in a dashboard fan switch. It worked well, and i love the switch. At this point, the headlights still worked the way they're supposed to.

 

Then last fall, my brother managed to put the door key into the ignition and get it stuck there. We couldn't get it out, so we followed the advice of some posters on here, took the ignition switch apart and mounted the relay in the passenger footwell where we can now start the car with a screwdriver. It's pretty cool

 

Since that last repair, i've had some weird headlight issues. When i have the selector in the low-beam position, all four lights are on, but they aren't all that bright. Plus, the dashboard "high beam" light is very weakly lit, even though the high beams aren't selected. If i switch it to high beams, the right-side lights both light up exactly like they're supposed to, but the left-side lights are barely on at all (if you look right at them up close you can see a very faint orange glow). When the high beams are on, the dashboard high beam light isn't on at all.

 

I have no idea what's up with that. The lights work well enough to drive, but they certainly aren't ideal. If anyone has an idea of what's going on or how my recent electrical adventures might have impacted the headlights, i'd love to hear it! Thanks!

 

Dave

[Loyale 2.7 Turbo]

First of All, Welcome to CentralAmerica.

Here, the thermoswitches and thermostats are better Away from the Car... :-\ ...I mean is better to take ´em Off...

Why?

Here we got only two stations by year: Ice Cool or Hell (We mean the "Dusty" that is out Hot Summer, and the "Muddy" That is our rainy Winter) in Spanish: "Invierno e Infierno" you know...

So, here there aren´t snow at all, so we suggest to remove all those crappy thermo things from all U.S.A. Version car that comes here... it was one of the first things done to my EA82 Subaru, back in 1985... it was Almost Always Overheatin´ ... now you know...

So, the answer to your question, I believe is this:

Due to the Fact that Those Subies got in the HeadLights, Always a Hot -Live- Wire (I mean, the one with positive + current, is always on) and the switch only interrupts the Ground, (-) which is divided in Two in the "Beam Stick" on the Steerin´ wheel... One for High Lights, the other one for Low Lights; I believe that your subie got a Damaged Ground on one Side...

Maybe the fire did damage the main wires, or maybe did burn the ground cables... so, to repair this; I suggest to get out the Plug from the Headlights on both sides, and with the car switch in "ON" position, and headlights Off, Search on both sides with a Tester, for a Live Wire, and it shall be the same in the same position in the Plug, on Both Sides...

Then, with Headlights "ON", search with a Tester, for the same ground on Plugs, on both sides...

You can make a cheap tester like This: with a 12Volts Bulb and its Base, you can connect the bulb´s Negative Wire, to the Ground - of the Car´s structure, or the Minus pole on the Battery, and with the other bulb´s wire (+) you can search the Hot -Live- Wire on the Headlights Plug.

Do the same but reversing polarity, to seach grounds on the Headlght Plugs.

First, try one side, with the Low Beam Activated, it shall be the same position on the Other Side, and repeat the same test with High beams on...

If anything is Wrong, that is where you can start to search for buned or cutted wires, and fix them up.

Thats it...

Good Luck!

[dbenzmaine]

Hey there Turbo,

Thanks for the welcome and for the advice. Sadly i'm back in the US right now, but i'll be in Honduras again for most of the summer. Never been to Roatan, but i hear it's pretty amazing.

Going at the headlights with a tester sounds like a good idea. I'm guessing that i actually messed something up in the steering column when i was playing with the ignition switch since the lights actually worked properly after the fire. We'll see!

Dave

[WoodsWagon]

You might want to send a small fire extinguisher down to have in the car.

With things getting wild and wooly with the electrics, it's best to be able to slow things down a bit with some fire retardent. I've put out cars with sand before, but it takes a lot of shoveling.