headlights up or down, change wiring Options

[jfort]

Jim Chambers kindly forwarded the followiing instructions for changing the headlight switch wiring so that the headlights stay down until the second stop:

Question: How do you rewire headlight circuit so lights stay down on first "click" (parking lights) of switch?
Disconnect battery ground strap.
Remove two screws, allowing fuse panel to drop, and unscrew bezel allowing headlight switch to be pulled out from rear so terminals are visible (leave all connected).
Terminal "K" on the switch has 3 gray wires attached. One is a jumper to terminal 58b. Remove the smaller (diameter) of the other two gray wires from "K" and attach it to terminal 56 of switch (has re/white lead on it).
Reconnect battery, give switch a try, and if all OK, disconnect battery again, replace switch and fuse panel, reconnect battery final time.

I tried it. One of the "other two gray wires" has two wires coming into the same terminal so I am not sure which is the smaller one. I can try it both ways. Then, does the smaller of the other two gray wires on K go to terminal 56 IN ADDITION to the red/white wire already on 56, or IN PLACE OF IT?? If the former, I'll need to find one of those connectors that allows TWO female connectors onto the same male terminal. If the latter, what happens to the red/white wire?

Can anybody help??

[Demick]

You need to leave the red/white wire on the #56 terminal, so presumably you will need a piggyback terminal in order to make this work.

I can't help you with which grey wire to move, because the wiring diagrams for 1971 cars only show two grey wires attached to the 'K' terminal (one of those is the previously mentioned jumper to the #58b). So this third wire is not on the wiring diagrams. However, the wiring diagram already shows a grey wire in addition to the red/white wire on the #56 terminal - and guess what - that grey wire already on the #56 is the headlight motor wire. So apparantly, the factory wiring diagrams already show the grey wire on #56 rather than being wired to the 'K' terminal. Interesting.

Makes it awfully hard to diagnose problems or figure out solutions when the wiring diagrams do not match the car!

Anyway, the grey wire on the 'K' terminal which should not be moved is the wire for the rear trunk light and the license plate lights. So if you switch the wrong wire, then your license plate lights should come on at the first click of the headlight switch instead of the headlights poppling up.

Hope this helps.
Demick