Damn boxes are fire hazards...

[boXman]

The ignition switch, the headlight switch, now this..

Was pulling apart the steering column today, in my '89 Vic...pulled the plug out of the turn signal/high beam switch...




...ain't that nice?

[interceptor1985]

What year is your car again? try and find a part a little newer that should help a bit that happend over here a while ago and the light switch burned too ..So far we had no more problems.....Good Luck with that!

[boXman]

Was pulling apart the steering column today, in my '89 Vic

Did you even read?

[interceptor1985]

LOL im a ditts jus ignore that one

[Lincolnmania]

i like to look at the pictures.......dude automobiles arent designed to last this long.....it never caught on fire be glad......now everybody scurry to their car and check all wiring

[GoodSamaritan]

I have worked on cars of all types. Let me tell you, if it was made after 1975 you WILL run into stuff like that.

[Tiggie]

I was driving my '64 Mustang before I sold it. The cigarette lighter shorted out... smoke rolled from under the dash... and a expensive '64 1/2 dash wiring harness was toasted. Didn't blow any fuses!

I haven't had an electrical problems yet, knock on wood, in my box.

The '84 Bronco II I worked on was a wiring nightmare. You get something finally working right again, and that causes something else to melt. Hacked wiring is my #1 turn off when buying a car.

[gadget73]

The wiring systems on these cars are barely adequate, and with age they get worse. Relay the headlights and dont be concerned with it anymore. That plug should be fine on my car, or at least it was when I replaced the MF switch last year and when I had the column apart not that long ago.

[85crownHPP]

boxmang - is that red solid wire the one that goes to the one pin in that connector thats melted bad? I wanna find out what that is. Id guess its for high beams.
And hell yeah headlight relay/wiring upgrade should be manditory for boxes. Making a standalone harness for my headlights out of a junkyyard car's harness was pretty easy.

[boXman]

Yea, the red wire is the one that melted it. Same as the headlight switch in my '88..

[raser13]

o.k. i'll be the dumb one. how do you do the wiring/relay upgrade to these tings i don't want mine to catch fire??? what do you get the parts from and how do you install 'em

[85crownHPP]

are you for real? the digi speedo master doent know how to wire headlights into realys???
just playin

You can either harvest or create a standalone wire harness for the headlights any way you want, then wire them so that they are powered right off the battery through the relay. Then just tap into the original wiring to activate the high/low beam relays. This will make it so only the small amount of current needed to throw the relays will flow through the headlight/highbeam switch.

[gabegt90]

Hy headlight switch connector looked like that as well

[raser13]

o.k. 85 cownyou got me on that one. i've just never been tempted to hack into someting as critical as the headlights before.if you f*ck up a cluster you replace a fuse and get a new cluster no biggie,but lights are a necessity.but if they're this much of a hazzard its worth looking into. thanks for all the info. oh and if santa's real nice to me this year and brings me a digi camera thats worth a hoot. i'll get pics of the fully functioning and installed cougar cluster in my car and i'll do a full right up with pictures for everyone

[85crownHPP]

thats the thing if you do it this way, you dont hack into the facotry wiring. If i wanted to I could unplug my added harness and plug the original harnes right back in and it will work.
I just unplugged the original wiring to the headlights, and plugged in the harness I made and wired it into the realys. Only place you have to touch the original wiring is to tap the high and low circuit to activate the relays with