My headlamps burnt out this past weekend and I'm trying to figure out why.
My troubles started a while ago when my headlights would turn off while driving, especially if I was on the brakes at a light.
I have a Shelby taillight conversion and the tail/brake lights were also very dim. I figured that the additional 4 taillamp bulbs were creating too large a draw of current resulting in dim bulbs and a temporary break in power to the headlamps.
To reduce the draw from the taillights, I first installed a brake light relay to reduce the draw through the brake light switch, and wired the headlights through another switch to reduce the load through the headlight switch. While this helped, it didn't eliminate the problems.
I finally installed LED taillight panels and a Painless headlight relay kit. This seemed to do the trick and both my headlights and taillights have been much brighter.
That is until my headlights went out on my last weekend. Fortunately, I was able to use my driving lights to get myself off the road. I had had my highbeams on and found that I was able to get the low beams to work, or at least one.
When I got home I did some checking. Power to the headlight sockets seems to be normal or at least consistant. I get 12V to each socket lower lead w/ lowbeams and 12V to one of the side leads w/ high beams. Checking resistance of the bulbs shows open resistance between all three prongs on one bulb and also on the the other bulb except for one. This seems to make sense that that is the only working low beam bulb.
So my headlamps went bad. Easy enough to replace, but how do I figure out why it happened and prevent it from happening again? Any advice would be appreciated.
My troubles started a while ago when my headlights would turn off while driving, especially if I was on the brakes at a light.
I have a Shelby taillight conversion and the tail/brake lights were also very dim. I figured that the additional 4 taillamp bulbs were creating too large a draw of current resulting in dim bulbs and a temporary break in power to the headlamps.
To reduce the draw from the taillights, I first installed a brake light relay to reduce the draw through the brake light switch, and wired the headlights through another switch to reduce the load through the headlight switch. While this helped, it didn't eliminate the problems.
I finally installed LED taillight panels and a Painless headlight relay kit. This seemed to do the trick and both my headlights and taillights have been much brighter.
That is until my headlights went out on my last weekend. Fortunately, I was able to use my driving lights to get myself off the road. I had had my highbeams on and found that I was able to get the low beams to work, or at least one.
When I got home I did some checking. Power to the headlight sockets seems to be normal or at least consistant. I get 12V to each socket lower lead w/ lowbeams and 12V to one of the side leads w/ high beams. Checking resistance of the bulbs shows open resistance between all three prongs on one bulb and also on the the other bulb except for one. This seems to make sense that that is the only working low beam bulb.
So my headlamps went bad. Easy enough to replace, but how do I figure out why it happened and prevent it from happening again? Any advice would be appreciated.
