Right side lights going dim?

HyPer-50

Member
Jun 26, 2003
377
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16
Woodstock, GA
Whenever I run around with just my headlights on, no problems what so ever, but then if I turn on my fog lights, the right headlight and right foglight go dim. It almost sounds liike a drain or short... I seriously doubt it's power shortage problem, because up until 3 weeks ago I had a pretty nice sub/amp setup, and now that it got stolen, should of free'd up any power if there was a shortage. Any clues as to what this could be and how I should go about trying to fix it? Thanks
 
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how is the condition of the harness across the radiator? the lighting wires Tee off at the driver side of the rad and go across for the pass side lighting. check the grounds really well too - id run a temp ground to see if that fixes it. if so, run new grounds.

just my lame thoughts. good luck.
 
After you have done all the above, you get to go looking for corroded or damaged connectors or wiring in the RH side wiring harness for the lights. Without a Chilton's shop manual to show you what the connectors are, and some idea of where they are located, it will be an Easter Egg Hunt. Under the car, dirt in your eyes with a voltmeter & flashlight in hand... Good Luck... :bang:
 
Ok, I know next to nothing about electrical.... Which ground would be bad, the right headlight, or the right foglight, or is there only 1 between the 2? lol... And if it's a "bad ground", does that mean that i just isn't grounded well, or is the ground wire actually bad? And ughh.... where would I go about finding these ground wires? lol... thanks
 
I am confident that there is a dedicated ground near the front of the car. follow the wire from the back of the headlight housing 'upstream'. There should be a wire somewhere along there that goes to a screw in the body. In fact, I am pretty sure that there is one such screw at the extreme outer edges of the upper radiator support (the piece of sheet metal just in front of the radiator). I remember removing it and adding the ground for my ignition to the passengers side screw.

If you see a screw or bolt in the body that has a wire under it, it is a ground. The battery is connected to the body (usually via the engine block) and so you can ground any electrical device anywhere on the car to the body.... for instance the tail lamps are grounded near the rear of the car. The whole body acts as a ground.

You can probably check if it's a ground problem by unhooking the headlight, run a jumper wire from the body harness to the corresponding pin on the lamp. Then wire another jumper from another pin on the light to the body. Turn the lights on. If the light is 'normal' illumination, then the problem is most likely ground related. If there are more than two pins in the connector (most likely with the headlights) one is high beam and will only be on when the high beams are.... try them all, you can't hurt it as long as the light itself is between the two jumpers you installed.

Checking a ground it pretty easy if you have a voltmeter too. If you do, set it to 'Ohms' and (with the lights off) put one lead on any of the pins in the connector on the wire harness and the other on bare sheetmetal. If the meter does not chage at all, try a different pin in the connector. One of the pins will be ground. When you find ground, the meter will read 'something' close to zero. If the number is much more then zero, I would say you have a problem with the ground strap in that harness... you need to trace it upstream like I mentioned before.

Good luck.