73 headlight issues, Lights pop up, won't turn on Options

[pastormacman]

So I searched and read through this thread:

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...eadlight++relay

But it didn't quite cover what I was looking for. But I did notice a couple of people asking if the car was a '73. Mine is a '73. But I didn't see anyone say why that mattered. Is there something specific about the '73 model that has headlight issues?

Anyway, here's my issue: With the battery connected and the ignition switch on, when I pull out the headlight switch, both lights flip up but neither lights up.

A little history: This is the same car that you all have been helping me get started in this thread:

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...eadlight++relay

Part of the problem this community helped me figure out was that my ignition switch was broken. So I replaced it with a new one. So I have a new, working ignition switch.

I thought that maybe the high beam/low beam relay had gone bad, so I bought a new one from Automobile Atlanta. Like you can see in the pic, it has five posts, and the description says that it fits 70-76 914. However, when I removed the old one from the car, it only had four posts and four wires connected. So I connected the wires to the corresponding posts on the new relay and left the fifth post empty.




After installing the relay, I still had the same problem: The lights flip up, but won't turn on.

Another monkey wrench: my turn signal stalk is broken. The internal mechanism flops around all over the place and the turn signal swings loosely. I know that the turn signal stalk is also the high beam/low beam switch so I'm wondering if that could cause the lights to not turn on.

What are your thoughts?

[lierofox]

I had similar happen to my '75 914, I ended up having to replace the high/low relay.

Try pulling down the fuse panel and use the test light directly on the high/low relay itself.

With the key switch in the on position, and the headlight switch turned on, you should have power all the time on terminal 56 (thick red wire with white stripe) and 30 (which should be jumpered together, as you mentioned) that's the single power feed coming from the headlight switch.

With the low beams on, you should have power at terminal 56b (thick yellow wire), and your test light should turn on when touching that terminal.

With the high beams on, you should have power at terminal 56a (thick white wire), and your test light should turn on when touching that terminal.

Terminal S (thin yellow and red striped wire) is the wire that goes up to the steering column switch.

So knowing that the test should be:
Ignition switch to On
Headlight switch On
High/Low Dimmer set to Low

When you have that configuration, use the test light to probe 56, and 56b.

If your test light DOES turn on when you probe terminals 56 and 56b, but DOESN'T turn on when you probe fuses 3 and 4, then the relay itself is fine, and you need to check the yellow wire between those two points.

If your test light DOES turn on when probing terminal 56, but DOESN'T turn on when probing 56b, then your high-low relay is bad.

One thing you can try is to wiggle the 56b terminal and see if that's enough to make contact, I noticed on my replacement hi/low beam relay, the base where the terminals go through was flexible enough that if I pushed on the terminals around, the internals of the relay were able to move and affect the movement of the relay contacts, preventing it from working.

It seems unlikely that the headlight switch itself is bad since your high beams are working, both of them receive power from the same spot on the headlight switch, the dimmer relay just directs it between the 2 filaments. So if the headlight switch were bad, I'd expect both of them to not work.