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Post by crjusty on Nov 23, 2008 22:17:38 GMT -5
Hey guys, I was wondering if you could help me with an electrical problem on my '87 justy. The problem is with the headlights. The longer they are switched on, the worse it gets, I believe it is a short in the wiring but I'm not sure.
What will happen is one or two wires which are connected to the relays? (silver, cylinder-looking things down below the steering wheel) will heat up pretty bad (right where they are connected to these relay things).
Another thing that happens is one of the headlight fuses inside the fuse box will heat up as well (the previous owner had 30 amp fuses instead of the recommended 15 amp. so they wouldn't burn out) so much so that it melted the plastic part of the fuse. If I remove that fuse which is supposedly for the right headlight, both lights stay on but the left headlight fuse will start to heat up.
Any help or suggestions with this problem would be greatly appreciated.
thanks
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Post by gearheadeh on Nov 24, 2008 2:12:02 GMT -5
Sounds like a bad ground problem. Check to see if there is a ground wire from the headlight mount to the body that forms the rad support.
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Post by crjusty on Nov 24, 2008 10:13:22 GMT -5
thanks for the responses guys.
gearheadeh: I'm gonna check to see if there is a ground wire like you mentioned. One question though: what do you mean by the "rad support"?
stacks: that post took me back to my high school algebra days...anyway I think that it could be a possibility that someone rewired the circuit somehow...
I am actually in Costa Rica, but most likely the car was brought down from the u.s. Any suggestions about how I can correct this circuit issue?
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Post by crjusty on Nov 25, 2008 20:43:10 GMT -5
ok, I investigated the wiring a little more and this is what I found...
there was an extra wire spliced into the red wire with the blue stripe right before the headlight connector (the one that says ground inside the h.l. connector). That wire stretches across the front of the car and connects to the opposite h.l. in the same place.
So, what I did was cut the wire to see what would happen and to my surprise both lights stay on. The only changes are that instead of the right h.l. fuse heating up, now the problem is with the left side fuse. And it seems as though the wire behind the dash doesn't heat up anymore. Also if I remove one fuse at a time, the corresponding h.l. shuts down now.
I can't really figure out what they were trying to accomplish with this mess of wires, but hopefully that will give you a better idea of whats going on.
Thanks
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Post by crjusty on Nov 26, 2008 19:50:05 GMT -5
yeah it seems as though the splice was done due to a bad relay, so they wired both h.l's to the same relay.
I went ahead and rewired the main wire on each side all the way to the relays, and replaced the bad relay.
but I think that the other relay must be somewhat bad as well, when I remove the left h.l. fuse the left h.l. stays on but VERY dim and the right h.l. fuse still gets hot.
I'm almost there, but I am still missing something
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Post by gearheadeh on Nov 26, 2008 21:29:52 GMT -5
Don't know if you experience rust where you are but here in the land of salted winter roads this is what we would do: remove the headlights with their mounting plates(four 10mm wrench size bolts) and grind or sand paper any contact areas with body of car that they mount to. then reinstall and make sure that there is the proper ground wires from each to body and that these contact freshly cleaned metal.
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Post by badshah on Nov 26, 2008 23:31:37 GMT -5
Found this diagram someplace on the internet If you take out Left H.L fuse then RED/BLK is disconnected, In Low-Beam position the RED/YEL is grounded so there is full voltage across low beam filament of Right H.L. But there would be some current flow through the Right Hi-Beam filament to RED/WHT wire through Hi-Beam filament of Left H.L through Low-Beam filament and to RED/YEL which is at ground. So it is not a fault, maybe another safety feature of Justy to keep lights dimly on when one fuse blows! I had a similar problem turned out that the fuse was not making proper contact with the contacts in the fuse holder. Try using some electrical contact cleaner and twisting the fuse to see if that is the case
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Post by crjusty on Nov 26, 2008 23:43:39 GMT -5
gearheadeh: i'm going to try out that suggestion, although we don't experience too much rust hear..only at the beach badshah: thanks for that explanation, that does make sense...i'll have to pick up some of that electrical cleaner
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