My car was recently stolen and crashed - front end passenger side damage...

Currently i have the passenger side headlight assembly, motor and all, unplugged and taken off of the car. Also the front bumper and front turn signals are off of the car.

No my strange headlight question:

With just the one headlight in; as soon as i turn on the head light it pops up fine, but the light doens't come on. And the strange part is that the high beam indicator comes on on the dash. It's not set for the high beams to be on, and when i do move it to the high beam setting nothing happens - still no lights and the dash still shows the high beams on.

Any thoughts?

 

Since it was driven by someone else, could the switch be bad? How about the fuse? Did the crash damage pinch some wires on that side?

 

Bad contacts in the high-lo switch. Happened to me too. You've either gotta clean them or get another switch.

 

First, verify that the headlight is still operable. Check this by swapping it to the other side (assuming that the driver's side works correctly) and seeing that it operates in both standard and hi-beam mode. May be that the impact cracked the glass, or otherwise burned out the bulb, which would result in the lids working correctly, but the headlight not shining.

Also, the high-beam indicator inside the car may come on if one of the headlights is burned out - this is not unusual for many cars on the roads today, my Q45 also has an indicator for brake lights that have burned out.

My feeling is that by replacing that headlight, you'll probably fix both issues. HTH,

 

Ok, more information:

i guess the switch could have gone bad - and how would you clean the high-low contacts? i pulled and checked all of the normal fuses after getting the car back - they're ok. i'm pretty sure there are no pinched wires, as i've removed all of the impact related electrical (namely all of the passenger side light assembly). i got to new headlight lamps, neither worked, and neither did the original undamaged lamp - so i'm pretty sure it's not to blame.

Anything else?

 

Go to a hardware store and get some electrical contact cleaner. Remove the turn signal assembly from the steering wheel and give it a good shot with the spray can. It helps if you work the switch a few times and finally let it sit for a while.

 

Update:

Wasn't the switch... Wound up being a ground on the passenger side. Painful. But no, you don't need two head lights or any of the fronts trurn signal indicators attached for one headlight to work correctly. Just need to have the ground wire attached.

derrick

 

Figures that it was a ground. The circuit runs through the orange markers.