As part of the engine compartment cleanup I pulled the wiring harness right
back to the firewall, and in the process I had to disconnect the dreaded
Lucar connectors over top of the fender arch, and remove the
headlight/signal light grounds where they're bolted to the chassis (in my
case, that was done using a little nut&bolt on the inside fender sheetmetal
just behind the radiator support - your mileage may vary). Anyway, I pulled
the headlight wires through the grommet to the inside of the fender, and
then found that the ground lug was held onto the rest of the wire by about
two strands worth of copper. I hadn't yet noticed any problem with headlight
brightness or intermittent operation, but this particular connection would
likely not have lasted more than another five hundred miles.
I just thought I'd throw this out there as a cautionary note - the solution
to this problem is to crimp on quality ring lugs (onto newly stripped, clean
wire ends), and to strain relieve the wire along its length so there isn't a
big dangling mass to stress the crimp connection. The classic symptom of a
bad headlight ground is that the light on the side with the bad ground
illuminates dimly, because the current will flow through the low and high
beam elements on the bad side, as well as the high beam element on the good
side, before returning to ground.
Best regards,
Theo
|