I have my '41 Ford running great. Came home the other night and hit the light switch as I was coming into the garage and suddenly I have NO lights anywhere on the car. Can't seem to find the problem. With so few wires ,I wouldn't think it would be that hard.Where do I look ???
Fuse for light switch, next would be wiggle the light switch. If it has a dimmer feature, try rotating it back and forth.
First thing you need to do is find out if its a fuse blowing, if so, is it from over load or short circuit.. Also there might be an inline breaker that resets itself. They did this on circuits that were needed, like ignition, lighting, wipers. If you ever had your lights go off on a pitch black night, your ignition shut the engine off right when your pulling onto a super fast express way, or loose wipers right in the middle of a torrential down pour you would see how important keeping these circuits energized is... -Look at the hi beam switch, are you blowing fuses or tripping a self- resetting. Try unplugging the switch and jumping it. see what happens..
I case you have a original steeringcolumn-switch check those two wire-terminal and the switch it self, happend to me on the MOT control....
Do you have an aftermarket wiring harness? Mine has a relay that I didn't know about. Lost my headlights in the middle of a drive home before I realized it was tripping. I replaced the relay with a new one and changed a couple circuits so that ONLY the lights were going through that circuit. Solved the problem. Sent from my SM-G981V using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
If you have a floor mounted dimmer switch give it a look. It's the "often forgotten" part of the light circuit.
I lost my lights on a highway curve at night (not fun) and by the time I got stopped and started to call for help, they came back on. Only thing I can blame it on is that the circuit breaker built into the switch tripped and then reset. I replaced the switch with one from Ron Francis and haven't had any more trouble. The old switch fed headlights and taillights through the circuit breaker and the new one had a separate feed for the tailights, reducing the load on the breaker. Probably a better switch, also. Gary
I just recalled something from many years ago, buddy needed help as his headlights went out. Check, test, etc. they should have worked. For some reason (OT car) I pulled the hi/low lever and the brights came on. I didn’t ask if he’d had a HL out or not. My feeling is he did. But I’d found it odd both low beams went out at the same time. My babble aside, do your high beams work?
I echo what others have said about the high beam switch. It is vulnerable to failure being on the floor. I would stress checking the ground source. If your car is mostly original the ground could be compromised. I had this situation on a former ride( rust ).
Had a friend who was a bit down on his luck (a common occurrence with him) come into the dealership I was working at with a no headlight problem. I told him to go get two new headlamps. He couldn't believe that both lamps would blow out at the same time. I told him they didn't, but for the past couple of years when I saw him at night I noticed that he only had one headlamp. He got two used ones, fixed the problem.
Original wiring. No fuses. Nothing seems to be lose. Have power to the breakers. I wonder if the breakers take time to reset. after a lose wire on the dimmer switch.
Don't you have a test light to check these things? Sent from my SM-T350 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
They shouldn't take but a minute to reset. All they have to do is cool off a bit. A loose wire on the dimmer switch wouldn't cause a breaker to trip unless said wire was completely loose, was the power feed wire to the dimmer switch, and contacted ground somewhere. However, a loose wire at the dimmer switch would certainly be a suspect for your lights not working.
Get under the dash with a test light, most likely a blown fuse, if everything else fails, check out you light switch. HRP
a Decent test light is your friend here. Make sure that it is grounded good and you actually have power somewhere so it lights up hooked to that ground before checking the lights. Simply meaning that doing that little step will make sure you aren't going nuts hunting a problem when the light isn't grounded right. No need to ask why I say that or always check the light to make sure it is working now.
Check light switch and breakers (power in AND out), follow the power and find where it stops. Stock wiring, the headlight switch is the only thing that will knock out ALL lighting (besides a power/battery wire).
I've seen automatic resetting breakers in taped in wiring harnesses. I also saw coil resister wire in wiring harnesses too.. I wonder who the Einstein was that cam up with that idea..
Well now this takes the cake, as they say. Worked this afternoon on the headlamp problem. Checked everything I could using trouble light, volt olm meter. Finally gave up. As I was crawling out from under ,picking up my tools I grabbed the socket extension and tapped on the relay box a couple of times and what happened......The lights came on. Apparently the dimmer switch that I fixed the other day had tripped the breaker, but it did not reset until I hit it. Thanks for all of the help and suggestions. !!!
I have a similar problem on my '42. Lights work but are dim and take milliseconds to come on. I think I have it narrowed down to the original circuit breakers mounted on the upper inside of the firewall. They are either original or were replaced with used ones when the car was refreshed. I suspect internal corrosion. These are 40 amp breakers and I will replace them with maxi fuses. I also have a NOS light switch to put in. That should do the trick.
One common problem is, that the original lightswitch is bridging the full current 12 or six volt, the contacts are usually corroded and to small in size , so this is reducing the capacity and is heating the switch up, until the contacts are burned. The solution i do is: I use one 40 amp relay for headlight and a other 40 amp relay for the lowbeam, this way the wires come directly from the batterie to the relay and then directly to the headlights using 2,5 squaremilimeter cable, no smaller. Also from the ignition goes a wire to the relay input to power the relay and from there to the lightswitch, this way only the minor current flows through the lightswich and is safe with it. On top of that you will realize that your headlights will be much brighter, due to much less current loss, with to much connections, that reduce the capacity. There is lots of information in the internrt how to hook up a relay veey easy with numbers on the relay..... Good advice is to keep at least one relay in your car. As you use one relay for highbeam and a other for low, high will still work, when low isn't. Also make sure the bulbs are a good tight fit, vibration in rocking bulbs cause sparking and bad contact which will reduce bulb life. Have fun and good night driving.
If you have halogen lights in the rig you need relays to protect the headlight switch and dimmer switch on older rigs. I went though about three dimmer switches before finally putting relays on my 71 parts hauler.
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