When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
So I retrofitted the original composite headlights and Viola! They function correctly save for having to replace a fuse. The strange thing is the conversion worked properly for a couple of weeks then a failure where the Hi beam was okay but the Lo beam was lighting both Hi and Lo in the H4 shells came about. The relay circuit that I set up was using signal from the original headlight socket the wire for Lo beam Red to the relay and for Hi beam Green to another relay. This was the state or the wiring when they were working with the conversion. Then, after a couple of weeks I noticed that the O.E. wiring went funny;
This I considered normal
... but the Lo beam on and this is the result;
This just doesn't seem right to me, but plugging in the composite headlights and they function normally. WTF am I missing here?
Where do you have both relays grounded at? Is that ground good? I am talking about the common spot were each relay coil is tied to ground. The other side of the coils are tied to the low beam and high beam wires.
Thanks for your response Dave. Both of the relays are grounded via individual dedicated 10 gauge line to a grounding bus bar that is connected to the negative terminal of the battery.
I'm NOT using the sockets' ground as I think the bus bar to battery terminal is more substantial.
The conversion I'm doing, that I've done on all of my rolling stock over the years is back convert to glass lensed sealed beams using Hella Vision Plus H4 shells, and Flösser 140/100 H4 bulbs. This conversion on this van '98 Econoline Club Chateau, worked for about two weeks then I began having voltage wierdness. What I found was that the OE sockets for the Aerodynamic Headlights, while on Lo Beam for some strange reason both the Hi and Lo wires show 12v. While on Hi Beam Voltage is only to the Green High Beam Wire. I've just replaced the Multifunction switch and this condition remains the same. Oddly enough, when plugging in the Aerodynamic headlights again, they start working normally, this is what blows my mind as on these sockets there's one wire for Lo Beam, one for Hi Beam and one for Ground, just like the old Sealed Beams. While the pin arrangement is different I took that into account.
These are the details of that conversion; https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...project-2.html
I am trying to go through scenarios, how the lowbeam power can appear on the highbeam or vise versa. From the research I have done, you have a simple high/low beam circuit with a simple switch. Nothing complicated or related there. Unless you have something else tied into these two circuits that would create a path. The circuits are tied together at the ground for the bulb. And they would be tied together at a ground point for the relays. Normally that would not be a problem, each bulb or each relay has a return path to ground and everything works. But if you lose that ground, then power can go up backwards through the other filament in the bulb or the other relay coil, looking for another return path.
I think it has to be a ground problem, or one of your new lights is faulty. Filaments have been known to break loose and fall against each other inside the bulb itself.
In the end, I may just go to a foot dimmer and bypass that whole damnable Multiswitch. In the meantime I have some LED conversion bulbs coming in the mail jsut in case I get called back to work before I delve into this again.
