Low Beam headlights

[Guest Leroy Cook]

I have been checking out why my low beams are not as bright as they were. The high beams are fine. I checked the wiring and it is as should be. I replaced the headlight switch a while ago. I even removed the headlight and connected it to a battery just to make sure it was not the bulbs! It is as if I am not getting a ground.

Any ideas on this one? Help:confused:

[Guest Mc_Reatta]

What year is your car, and are both low beams equally dim or is one side dimmer than the other?

First thought is there is wire damage at the socket most likely on the driver's side if both bulbs equally dim. If wires aren't routed correctly the conductors inside can break from flexing as the headlights raise and lower.

Do you have a DVM?

[DAVES89]

Digital Volt Meter

[Barney Eaton]

Quite likely broken wires inside the insulation at the headlight connector as suggested by McReatta

Attached are a couple of pictures. The routing of the wire ......see picture.

The sketch shows where the wires break because of the continued flexing.

[Guest Leroy Cook]

This is what I have done so far:

Checked wiring going to low beam on both sides.

No bad wiring

Removed ground Connections and cleaned them. This is next to the battery.

Checked the bulbs for brightness.

Checked battery voltage 12.85 VDC

Checked voltage at connector 11.45 VDC

Replaced the headlight relay with another relay No change.

I did relace the headlight switch a couple of months ago. Maybe this is bad?

I will not give up on this till I find the problem!!

[Barney Eaton]

Take out the headlight bulb and and drive another Reatta under it. Will solve all your problems,

[Ronnie]

This is what I have done so far:

Checked voltage at connector 11.45 VDC

To check the voltage you should back-probe the hot wire at the bulb connector with the light burning. If you had 11.45 at the connector, with the light burning, that should enough voltage for the light to burn brightly. If that is that case the next thing you should do is run a jumper wire from the ground wire at the headlight connector to the negative post on the battery to see if the light gets brighter. If it does you have a bad ground.

[Guest Leroy Cook]

I feel kind of dumb to admit this but during my 'trouble shooting' I moved some wires and I found that my ground connection on the BATTERY was not tight. Once I corrected this everything is fine.

This also answered the question as to why the Reatta would not start when the cold snap happened and my wife called AAA and had the car towed home. This battery was installed over a year ago. I guess I should have done this.

[Ronnie]

Good to hear you got your problem fixed. Sometimes it's real easy to overlook the basics.

[Barney Eaton]

It is also good when we get closure to these questions/problems. Quite often suggestions are given and the original poster never lets us know what was found.

Thanks for the input.

[charlie1]

I had a bad ground cable on my 89 Riviera and the electrical problems were unbelievable. After replacing a bunch of parts that were not defective I took the car to a expert who started at the beginning THE BATTERY and found the problem. He cleaned both cables but I decided to have them both replaced. We used OEM cables. The Positive was a bit shorter but worked fine. Now I have some spare parts. Thank you for posting your solution.