Low Beam and Front Turn Signal Problems

Besides the possibility of bad bulbs, which I have not checked yet, is there anything else that would cause my lowbeams and front turn signals to not work?

Both of the highbeams and both of the small parking light bulbs are working fine. Rear turn signals, running lights and brakes all are fine.

You may have a separate fuse for each side or, your ground wire isn't attached or it's loose.

Larry--when I replaced my headlights one of then is a tiny bit dimmer than the other one. From your above post I should check the ground wired connection---right? Just trace it back from behind the light bucket where it exits to where it terminates---right?

Troy--your VS has separate fuses for low beams and high beams.

The fuses are located above your left knee as you sit in the driver's seat.

From left to right the fuses are;
1. Brake light
2. Dash, parking and tail lights
3. Turn signals, ignition & radio
4. Horn & wipers
5. High beam, headlights
6. Low beam headlights

First thing I'd do is check that low beam fuse.

Last week my high beam part of one of my headlights burnt out. I replaced both headlights with H6024 Halogen lights which are spectacular. Sylvania made them but others make the same H6024 s.
Plug and play and slightly lower power consumption than the old lights. At just $11.00 each they were a great bargain.

Maybe that high beam problem is the same as I had---just a burned out headlight sealed beam.

If you swap out the headlights, replace the little parking lights at the same time. I used a Sylvania 89LL and they too are brighter at the current draw as the old ones.

One tip--those screws on the sides of the chrome surround are for adjusting the lights up or down---not for removing the headlights. Also the screw at the bottom is the only screw holding the headlight "buckets" to the car. At the top the buckets just hang from a piece of metal--just remove the bottom screw and then lift the light up and out.

I hope this helps you.

The fuses are ok. Like I mentioned, the small parking lights inside the housing are working and the highbeams are working, so it doesn't seem like it would be a ground problem. The front turn signals and the lowbeams are not working, but everything is working at the rear of the car.

Right...

Ground(s) ?

Check for 12V with a multitester or Volt Ohm meter. You're losing 12V somewhere in your lighting system. Check your fuses and switches for continuity. You've likely got a bad switch or connection in your system.

Sorry....I am not a VS expert. Does it have a floor mounted hi/lo switch? If so could the lo feed wire have fallen off?

Alan's right.But their is a outside change you got a bad bulb.

If your emergency flasher is stuck half way on and half way off it can cause problems of this sort--maybe---just sayin'

Not the flasher or the tails would not be working. I checked the fuses and they are all ok.
I connected the headlight directly to the neg. battery terminal and nothing.
Checked the voltage at the bulb connector and there is no voltage on the lowbeam terminal, so the bulb is good.
The connector has a blue wire going back into the car, hopefully it stays blue under the dash. I need to do some voltmeter testing at the switch and keep working back from there.

Troy, does VS have a wiring diagram for their factory-built cars?

Don't see one on their site or here, although there is this diagram here, on the SOC site:

https://www.speedsterowners.com/library/wiringdiagram/

If your car is wired as in the diagram, the next step back from the headlights is the dimmer switch. Is yours on the floor or the column?

If it's on the floor, there don't seem to be any single points of potential failure in the diagram that would explain the outages you're seeing.

If the dimmer's on the column, that's the one place where the low beam headlight and turn signal circuits pass through the same switch.

The dimmer circuit utilizes a "Headlight Relay". I've had one that failed to work in the low beam side... I've also had one miss wired that did the same thing, although it got HOT and would not return to hi beam once low beam was selected.... Just my .02....

I forgot, Floor mounted dimmer switches probably won't use the relay........

Mitch-Jack Crosby has some VS wiring data sheets in HIS "photos" page. Click his above post. Scroll down about a dozen rows.
Labeled as 1-thru-5 (inclusive). May be helpful.
SS

With the obvious things out of the way such as bad bulb, bad ground, voltage to the plug, fuses etc etc... About all you can do is trace the wire to it's origin.. All of which has been mentioned by others and myself.. Good luck


Jack, yes, check the ground. If that's not the problem then switch bulbs to verify that it's not a bad headlight bulb. Also check your hot wires and make sure its connections are tight.

One more tweek. Aftermarket parts are getting terrable.

Make certain the bulb is in the socket lining up with the 2 contacts perfect I have had problems with my tail lights as equiped by VS Finally got feed up with them and went to a junk yard and robbed the light sockets off a older school bus. and swapped mine out and spot welded the upgrades into my teardrop housings.. I fixed that up perfect.

My front turn/park lamps are are Stoddards Import factory replacements,, All brass very good quality parts The VS front turn/ park lamps Parts are JUNK.. I threw them out . There nothing but trouble waiting to happen.

Even the park lamps in the headlights gave trouble I was able to replace them with genuine vw parts before BFY went kaput.. But West Coast Metric may have them If i was imformed correctly.. i

I have sence then came up with a repair for the others replacing the melted plastic with fiberglass pannel scrapps. and a one peace copper contact plate that cant shortout and hea tup.. If EIS parts warehouse want to copy Id be glad to send them one of my repaired spares.. to make a run of them

Thanks, Larry!

Update on my original problem.

It turns out that I actually had two problems. Both of the turn signals were simply not making a good contact with the terminals inside the socket. I replaced the bulbs with two new led bulbs and they worked fine. That left just my low beams not working.

I always wondered what that other 5 terminal relay up under the dash was for and now I know. It's a headlight relay. There is a blue wire and a white wire that power the high and low beams. I forget which is which, but jump the hot wire to each of them and you get low and high beams. So it's a bad relay. VW part # 111941583 also available from Autozone part # LR623 and O'Reilly's part # R3018 and Napa part # AR284.

Good man, Troy! Glad you got your problem fixed, and good of you to let others know. That's how we all learn. Many times folks post with problems, but never post the solution.

You know, I looked at that relay schematic and thought; "THAT can't be right!"

So then I enlarged it and looked again and, Damn! That's a pretty trick way of using one relay instead of two! Very nice!

(Those VW designers (or Bosch, or whom-ever)......always thinking.)

i ope you save the old one and try taking it apart and saving it..Itt can be saved if the plactic parta are ok .

Actually, I took it apart and tried to fix it before I bought a new one. It's pretty complicated in there, little levers and several contacts. I couldn't tell what was wrong with it, so I just bought a new. $32