one dim Headlight

I replaced my headlights with silverstar and still my driver side headlight stays very dim and the passenger side headlight is bright like it should be. I checked the ground wire and the fuse. I am pretty sure I swapped the correct relay but still no change.

What am I missing?

I'd clean the ground, but more likely is that the wiring just can't handle the extra wattage. There are upgraded wiring kits available.

its was doing it before I swapped the headlights too. That is why I went ahead bnd bought the Silverstars. I figured it would fix it. I will clean up the grounds and do some wire tracking and make sure nothing is broken or messed up some where.

You could also try some electronics contact cleaner like Deoxit. If you have corrosion in the headlight bucket where that lamp plugs in, that could be causing your problem. This stuff works good.

I'd grab a voltage meter and check voltage at the headlight and start backtracking from there. Find out where the voltage drop is occuring and fix as needed.

Its suppose to be 12 volts at the light right?

Definitely--at least! With the car running you should see a full 13-14v.

You might also make sure that there's nothing funny going on with the brights being on one side or something (check the power at each plug on both high and low and make sure they're identical).

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Theres two ways to do this; 1. you can apply good known ground straight from the battery to pin 3 of the socket, or 2. you can just clean the ground.

But also note: there is one grounding point per side of the car!!! They are on the outer side of the frame rail per side. Look there, along the frame rail, below where the hood latch bracing attaches to the frame rail. It is a 10mm bolt that grounds a slew of wires to the frame rail. This is repeated on the other side for the other light. Not only are these the grounds for the headlights but also the grounds for the turn signals, fog lights, and whatever else thats included in the front harness.

1. Testing: take a wire (speaker wire, multimeter wire, whatever) and secure it to the ground (-) of the battery. Take this wire and "probe" it into the socket at pin 3 of the connector as seen above. This provides direct ground to the light. The light will shine very brightly. Why? Because, pin 3 is ground and completes the circuit. If the ground is corroded or not "making", the circuit will not be able to provide the full amperage to the light. Think of it as 80,000 Bears fans trying to get through a single doorway at the same time. Just like this would produce a fairly quite stadium, so as produces a dim light.

2. Fixing: Take out the 10mm bolt. With fine sandpaper (300-400 preferably a dremel with sanding disc) sand each and all wire eyelets until they are new cooper-looking. Also sand the base at the frame rail where they are sandwiched by the bolt. Put the bolt back in a torque down.

If either of these does not produce a bright light, then the delivery of the current may be lacking somewhere in the supply. But, start with the ground and we'll go from there.

I understand what you are saying. Thank you for the info. I planned on unhooking the wire from the light and and measuring the volts at the light with a straight to battery ground and to the rail ground to see if there is a change. If that does not solve it I will have to work my way to the connector and so on.

Let me know if anything else pops in your guys heads. I really do hate wiring, so many things can go wrong. lol

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Ok according to this diagram. No matter if my lights are on high or low beams, the driver light only gets 11 bolts while off and 13.8 volts running to the connectors 1 and 3. It never switches to connector 2.

I am going to scrub the diagram in the chilton for an explanation. Is it like the fan relays where there are three of them or a relay to swap the individual light from high to low. That would make sense if there was.

You know this sounds like something that happened on my other 944. Checked the switch, bought several headlights, just to find out that somehow the wiring right before the connector had totally disintegrated - no short/no burn marks/no nothing! Ohming out the runs was the only way to determine the problem. Ran new wires and I now have bright lights!

I've been checking voltage. How many amps should be at the headlights?

Tthe other thing that has me stuck is still to fact the power is not switching from high to low connectors.

I have figured some of the problem out but have not corrected it thoroughly.

If I unscrew the ground on the passenger side from the rail both lights go out. There was no effect when removing the driver side ground. So I then cut the ground wire of the driver side and plugged it straight to the battery with the passenger side still unscrewed. The opposite situation occurred; the driver side was bright and the passenger side was bad.

I reconnected the passenger ground and spliced the driver side headlight ground to its own ground. Now they both work. Weird.

I guess the problem lies within the ground wire that run across the front bumper connecting the lights. It will have to get fixed properly another day. I have to figure out why the front driver side turn signal doesnt work now.

Wires!!!!!!!!!!!!! They can break a project fast.

Yup, Grounds are a pain in the butt on this car. Glad too see you've found the problem.

Have you thought about an upgraded light wire harness like this
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not yet. Will that work once I go to bucket lights?

Yes, it will have the same connections (low beam, high beam, and ground).

There's a new one for sale (discounted) on rennlist right now:
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Yup, Grounds are a pain in the butt on this car.

DITTO x 100!! Congrats on finding the problem!

with the 944 flip up lights there is also a conncector (plug ) about 6 inches back from the head lamp that clips onto the head light bucket . it is common that the wire will brake there from the head lamps going up and down . split the jacket back and look for a wire starting to brake in that area . you can also do a voltage test before and after theat connector .

ok, I will do as soon as I replace a fuse on my multi-meter, I touched the wrong wire while doing an amperage check.

I have to start tracing my turn sinals too, seems like the drver side has alot of issues.

Don't be too surprised when you go to buy a fuse. If you have the common 11 amp 1000volt fuse it cost anywhere from about $8 to around $39! It is expensive because it is 11 amps and only is made for multimeters.

no I have two 250 Volt .5 amp fuses in my multi-meter. only 3 dollars for 4 fuses