Failed to fit a boomslang headlight harness again!

Today is the second time I have wasted a morning failing to fit the boomslang headlight harness. Has anyone else had similar problems with theirs?

The first time was taking it out of the box and then discovering the power supply and earths were, as far as I am concerned not acceptable, so I spent the time soldering and heat shrinking to extend them both back to the battery.

Having done that, today I though I would have a go at fitting it, by all account it is a simple plug and play harness and should be very straight forward. dismantled the front end to remove the headlight no problem and then discovered the hole in the headlight bowl is not large enough to pass the plug through.



Dismantlement the land rover headlight plug to pass it through no problem, removed the grommet and then could not pass the spade connector through the grommet so will need another one of them the boomslang harness.



The headlight bowl hole is not flush and is raised so I am assuming that a standard grommet will not work. Either way I did not have a suitable sized standard one in my box either.

Move on to dismantle the plugs on the boomslang harness and had to cut off the plastic shroud surrounding the ceramic plug as there is no way that could be removed and again it would not fit through the headlight bowl, once carefully removed (to allow refitting) one of the ceramic plugs then fell apart.



I am guessing that either in shipping or the extending of the harness it had broken and was being held together by the plastic cover So I will need a replacement for that as well.

I also noticed that there is not enough slack between the boomslang headlight plug and the boomslang male so will have to trim back some of the conduit and rewrap to allow more slack between the plugs.

All in all so far I am not particularly impressed. For the amount of extra work needed on the loom itself (even without the broken plug) it would not have been much more effort to make my own loom up from scratch. I also do not know if I have the wrong headlight for the loom but it surely cannot be correct that you need to cut off the plug cover, to be able to remove the plug and pass it through into the headlight bowl when this a fundamental part of fitting. Everyone seems to rave about them, but from my experience I would not recommend them to anyone and would instead suggest building you own version.

Am I being fussy, am I doing something incorrectly, or is it actually just not that good a product and anyone with a little knowledge of automotive wiring would be better off making their own?

No not fussy.
They are indeed cheap and poorly made, but at 7 quid a loom I wasnt expecting any more.

I extended my power cable to pick up from the main live on the alternator, the red/blue crimp heat shrinks are fast and very very good.
Just got a hole cutter bored out bowls, fit grommet job done, you have to bear in mind that they will never be waterproof, the best you can hope for is to keep the weather off and as soon as you wade all bets are off!
Spray all terminals with Wurth2000 or Wynns viscotene.

I did my old series first and did one headlamp and compared it to the other still std headlamp against the wall and even with my carp eyesight I could see the copy boomslang loomed one was brighter.

Its such an easy thing to do, building your own gives you full control.

nobber said:

Its such an easy thing to do, building your own gives you full control.

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Better quality wire as well, you do have to bare in mind most people dont understand relays and are frightened of them.
I have had to explain them to mechs who have been spannering for years, weirdly the apprentice picked it up as quick as anything.

lynall said:

They are indeed cheap and poorly made, but at 7 quid a loom I wasnt expecting any more.

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Mine is a genuine boomslang and was rather more that £7 Unfortunatly. But still cheap and poorly made as far as I am concerned! I think what is most annoying is the fact it is sold as a simple plug and play upgrade, the instructions describe it as simple plug and play, and other people have explained it as plug and play but from my experience it is anything but!

I think I may just cut my losses and buy some more parts to be able to properly make my own version.

lynall said:

I did my old series first and did one headlamp and compared it to the other still std headlamp against the wall and even with my carp eyesight I could see the copy boomslang loomed one was brighter.

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I am not doing. For brighter lights, that will just be a happy by product. I am doing to unload reduce the load through the column switches as I have had them burn out previously.

On the ceramic plugs you can pop the connectors out,put into the bowls & refit.
That’s what I done

http://www.mgb-stuff.org.uk/lights10.htm
Followed this on my RRC (which uses the same dip/flash/horn/indicator switch as the MGB & has the same reputation for melting)

Hicap phill said:

On the ceramic plugs you can pop the connectors out,put into the bowls & refit.
That’s what I done

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That is exactly what I did, but I still had to cut off the yellow plastic cover as you could not remove the wires from that which I was not impressed by. As you can see from the photos one of the ceramics was also broken. I had to do the same thing with the plastic plug fitted to the Land Rover loom to remove the wiring from the headlight bowl.

I must have been lucky then

All this ''switches melting'' stuff, it happens, however if you think about it, what kind of current could cause that much heat to melt the switch? And those switches are fairly chunky things, the contacts in them are huge, if you ask me a switch melting shows signs of something seriously wrong and when it happens its lucky its the switch and not the wiring that melts, if the wiring goes its lights out properly.

I made up my own on both my 90 and RRC, simple enough even for me but I followed the wireing dia posted by MHM, bought all the stuff from Vehicle wireing products, and probably went over the top with cable size.
In all each vehicle cost about 50% more than the Paddocks offering but I was able to run wires where I thought fit. Took me about a day to do each.

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I had one and never got it to work properly, not that it made a huge difference in the first place. Cheap crap rubbish imo

frog hopper said:

I made up my own on both my 90 and RRC, simple enough even for me but I followed the wireing dia posted by MHM, bought all the stuff from Vehicle wireing products, and probably went over the top with cable size.
In all each vehicle cost about 50% more than the Paddocks offering but I was able to run wires where I thought fit. Took me about a day to do each.

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woth the alterations I have made and the other parts I still need it will come out about the same price as yours, but similarly will be done “properly” and routed sensibly.

nobber said:

All this ''switches melting'' stuff, it happens, however if you think about it, what kind of current could cause that much heat to melt the switch? And those switches are fairly chunky things, the contacts in them are huge, if you ask me a switch melting shows signs of something seriously wrong and when it happens its lucky its the switch and not the wiring that melts, if the wiring goes its lights out properly.

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Having seen the failures I do not think it needs to be that hot to melt the switch. The plastic is not discoloured, it is just where the contact warms and softens the surrounding plastic, and due to the pressure from Where switch presses on on contact, the contact sinks into the soft plastic. Thinking about how long you have your lights on sustained pressure of a long period it does not need to be that soft for it to eventually sink low enough to break the contact.

I agree if the wiring is getting hot enough to properly melt/burn then something is seriously wrong, but I do not think that is the case (at least with the failure I had) and think it is just usage over a prolonged period of time. Fitting relays should reduce the load on the switch so it should no longer warm up at all.

I cant remember what fuse is in there, 8 amp I think from memory (glass in mine)? Might be worth fitting a smaller amp fuse rather than have the switch act as a fuse.

mystery said:

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It might be an idea to include cable ratings and loads from lamps, people might just go out and fit 8 amp cable rendering the fuse as pretty useless.