Light problems...

Right, here's the situation -

1993 200 Tdi 110.

Bought it a few months ago, the right side headlight main bulb has been intermittent for a while, lately it was pretty much totally knackered - it would come on at the dim setting, but would remain at that even when you turned on dipped beam or headlights.

Took it to bits yesterday, found the connections on the back of the bulb corroded badly and the connector housing melted, obviously through heat build up because of the resistance. Cleaned up the connectors with a knife and sandpaper and it worked perfectly, for about 2 minutes, at which point the dipped beam portion of the bulb blew

No worries thought myself, **** happens, I'll get a new bulb and connector tomorrow and all will be well

Anyhoo, the upshot is that the right hand side bulb works fine on full beam, but doesn't illuminate at all on dim or dipped beam.

I have checked - fuses, connectors at the bulb, wiring (blue wire with red trace) as far back as it goes into the harness, ground wire to bodywork, bulb in case I'd been unlucky enough to get a duff bulb.

Is there anything else obvious anyone could suggest? The left hand lights work prefectly.

Cheers

Puch

Puchacz said:

Is there anything else obvious anyone could suggest? The left hand lights work prefectly.

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run a wire from the left to the right headlight

jailon said:

run a wire from the left to the right headlight

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Might end up doing that yet!

Now the indicator and the little sidelight on that side are playing up occasionally too... what the feck?! Thinking it may be an earth fault somewhere - would cleaning the earth strap onto the bodywork at the front there make a difference to the lights?

The lights earth onto the inner wing, via a small bolt. It will probably be well and truly stuck, but undo them, clean them up and clean up the face of the inner wing. That will see your earths are good, might even be worth pulling the earth multi-bullet connector apart and cleaning them up.

Another option would be to rewire the lights so that they are fed via a live feed, via relays which are switched by the existing lighting feeds, and new earths.

Don't just connect it up 2 as the wiring wasn't designed to for 2 lights from one wire.

Well I swapped the fuse for the light and it now works, strange as the fuse I took out looks absolutely perfect.

I'm going to leave it alone now

I'd still check the earths.

Puchacz said:

Well I swapped the fuse for the light and it now works, strange as the fuse I took out looks absolutely perfect.

I'm going to leave it alone now

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Had the metal oxidized?

Sometimes all it takes taking a connector apart and plugging it in again and it will sort electrical problems.

discomania said:

Had the metal oxidized?

Sometimes all it takes taking a connector apart and plugging it in again and it will sort electrical problems.

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Nah, everything looked clean. Putting the same fuse in and out a few times made no difference.

New one and it's all good.