Rant!

[lsemmens]

This should be automotive, but, I don't need help fixing it. Had to take SWMBO to the hospital yesterday. After several hours assessing and such they admit her. Fine, driving home at about 10PM. Right rear tyre has a slow leak, so after a bit of driving found a servo with an air hose. Hop into car and spotties come on, turn them off and find bloody headlights both out? Look for fuse and found both ok. Now spotties wont even come back on! Check all obvious (and easy to reach) connections and they all seem ok. Buggerise around thumping swiches and the like hoping that it was a loose wire the just has developed a bit of corrosion, no joy. hit the spottie switch a couple of times and the spots come on. (crazy thing is the dash and tail lights are all working, it's just the headlights. I'm stuffed if I know how the spotties are working because they are wired through the high beam as they should be. Anyway, I still had about 60km to go to get home so, rather than attract the attention of the constabulary I "adjusted" my spotties to look at the ground so as not to blind anyone and did not touch ANYTHING till I got home. Now I'm about to go outside to see what has happened, (I suspect a dodgie earth.)

[lsemmens]

Problem solved! I bought a floor mounted high beam switch off evil bay some months back because the column mounted dip switch was just plain flakey. The switch has gone open circuit, so I replaced it with a dash mounted toggle. Next job was to change some tyres on the car as the current ones were only meant as a stop gap until I got some new tyres. Second son had replaced the tyres on his vehicle for off road tyres and gave me his old ones as they were near new. A couple of hours of sweat with a few tyre levers and I now have 4 new tyres on rims ready to go onto the Jack tomorrow! A successful day even though I had not planned it.

[LeroyPatrol]

every so often I would get customers come in to the dealership and say their high beam or low beams are not working. It would be a case that both low or both high were blown. Nothing wrong with switches, fuses etc.

[mtv]

This should be automotive, but, I don't need help fixing it.

Moved thread to Automotive section for you.

It's the subject that determines the best section to post in, not whether help is being requested or not.

I would have thought the best course of action when the column dip switch was becoming dodgy would have been to replace it with another one.

I'm guessing cost was the main factor why you chose an alternative method.

I had a similar failure of a column dip switch many years ago, but with the opposite effect... stuck on high beam in the 'highbeam flash' position, so even with ignition off, the highbeam remained on.

Only fix was to disconnect the battery once home... then disconnect the lamp connectors so I could drive to get a new column stalk the next day.

[shred]

every so often I would get customers come in to the dealership and say their high beam or low beams are not working. It would be a case that both low or both high were blown. Nothing wrong with switches, fuses etc.

It’s funny that you say that. I had a VS Commodore that blew both low beam headlights on the same day... no headlight troubles for years before, nor afterwards.

I guess both globes came off the same production line, one after the other, Both had been subjected to the same number of power on/power off events and even the same bumps on the road.

[lsemmens]

Finding a new switch for a '94 Jackaroo was rather difficult, and, I prefer the floor mounted switch, so used it as and excuse to get one. Pity the thing did not last.


@MTV fair enough, I did intentionally put it in General Chat, but I'm happy enough with it in Automotive, as the title said, it was just a rant!

FWIW I had to go see the missus (in hospital) this PM and the "new" tyres got a good work out. 200 Ks round trip and not a wobble out of any of them, not bad considering I had no method to balance them.