PASSENGER SIDE INNER HEADLIGHT WIRES, ( Stranege crimps on each wire )//

[Moraystag]

Gent's in the process of changing inner main beam lights.
When removing the passenger side light fitting, the male and female terminals were crimped back onto themselves with a clasp and toothed part inside. Cant fathom out what this is for, as I expected there to be 2 x male / female attachments only. Any ides why each wire is crimped back onto itself with the metal teeth inside clearly breaking the outer covering and exposing the bare wires within?/

Mike

[Lingen]

Mike. Sounds like the dreaded Scotchlocks to me. They are a rather nasty way of breaking in to a circuit by cutting through the insulation, and are often used to wire up tow bar sockets etc.. They will probably be ok if you leave them alone, but if you remove them, I would insulate the damaged areas, or re-wire if possible.

[Rubce]

Hi Mike

Whilst you are at it, are you going to re-wire the healdights so all four come on for DIP and also all four for MAIN? I have found it a definite improvement. I can supply a wiring diagram if you need it.

Regards

Bruce

[Moraystag]

Yes deffo the Scotch locks, I hadnever seen these before and could not for the world of me understand why they are there, they just don't seem to be serving any purpose at all. I have removed them and will try and avoid using them, but someone at some time had used them to break into the circuit. However as far as I can see there has never been a tow bar on the car, so not sure why, each wire was doubled back on it's self

Thank's for that Bruce but I'm going to leave them as they are. I really do not have the confidence to start rewiring them up, although it sounds a damned good idea.
Mike

[Staggard]

Hi Mike

Whilst you are at it, are you going to re-wire the healdights so all four come on for DIP and also all four for MAIN? I have found it a definite improvement. I can supply a wiring diagram if you need it.

Regards

Bruce

Hi Bruce just wonderd, did you use relays and the orignal wireing to operate them. I've already changed mine and fitted 100/90 H4's I can get away with that over here but when I took the car for it's test (MOT) they made me disconnect the inner dip which was reconnected stright afterwards I also had to fit a change over relay and a diode for the headlight flasher I would be really interested how you did yours. Graham

[Greenstag]

Hi Bruce....PM sent
Dave

Hi Mike

Whilst you are at it, are you going to re-wire the healdights so all four come on for DIP and also all four for MAIN? I have found it a definite improvement. I can supply a wiring diagram if you need it.

Regards

Bruce

[Moraystag]

Well gent's found out what the scotch locks were for today. Someone previously had tried to mate two male earth fittings together using what seemed to be a double femal connection. This was covered in waxoil and muck and at a glance looked to be a neat double female / female connector, but was in fact a small black rubber sleave with no conductors at all within.
This had obviously caused someone problems before so they had used scotch locks which crimped both live and earth wires directly back onto themselves to create a complete circuit.
Bit of a bodge to get the lights to work by someone previously, but thankfully now removed and replaced with male to female bullet connectors.
Funny thing is that I pretty well know for sure that none of the previous owners undertook any mechanical or electrical work on themselves, and always sent the car to a garage, so here's another example of garage work at it's best.

Mike

[Rubce]

Hi Dave/Graham

Easy to do. You simply use the existing wiring from the steering column as the triggers to four new relays. I mounted the new additional relays inside the cabin. Some people add an additional water tight plastic box inside the engine bay into which they mount relays.

The attached document gives you general the idea for how to use 4 relays. Plus it also contains some useful info on relays and how they work.

headlight.pdf

With my car I went slightly further by using a seperate fuse for each relay. Plus, I wired it as follows:-

Relay A : outer DIPS
Relay B : inner DIPS
Relay C : outer MAINS
Relay D : inner MAINS

This means that if any one circuit fails you are still legal by having an equal number of lights each side of the car. It involves a bit more wire but hey if a jobs worth doing! If you copy the circuit in the attachment and a relay fails, you loose all the lights on one side which is not helpful.

If you have any questions, give me a shout

Regards

Bruce

[Staggard]

Hi Bruce my wireing must have been a bit different, when you turn on the headlights from the main switch the outer lights come on dip when you move the stick switch on the column to main beam all four of the lights come on but the dips did not go off so the dip switch did not switch from dip to main it just brought the main beam on Cheers Graham