quickie headlight wiring question

[BerniniCaCO3]

Hi--

I rewired relays into my headlights 2 years ago.
Recently the high beams stopped working.

Don't laugh-- but at the time I didn't realize you could buy harnesses! I've got the wires soldered directly to the relay. OK, you can laugh. I'm suitably embarrassed.

The 'signal' wire still sends 12V and the fuse looks intact (also, swapping fuses from working low beams to broken high beams did nothing), so gotta be the relay right?
So I went to swap all the wires over to be connected to harnesses, and then plug new relays into the new harnesses.

I thought I was careful but something got mixed up and it's not working.

So here's what I want to know. Looking at the harness, it has 3 wires. You can turn it one way or another but let's do it like this:

l _ l

looking at the harness head on, staring into the female connectors, from left to right, do you know what the wires are?
One's gonna be ground, one's gonna be hot. I do not know what the third wire is. The high beams and the low beams are completely independent, so it's not like there are 2 hots for dual-filament, I shouldn't think.

If you could clarify this it would help out a lot! Then I can pull the nearest headlight, and trace back to find out which wire out to be connected to what part of the relay!

[gadget73]

there are 2 different headlights on these you know. One is a single filament high beam only. Its got 2 prongs. The other is a dual filament low/high beam. Common ground, one hot for low beam, one hot for high beam. In high beam mode, all 4 lamps are lit on high. Looking at your diagram, from left to right it should be ground, high+, low+

If I'm not too far off here, what you should find is that the ground goes to both lamps, the high goes to both lamps, and the low goes only to the outer pair of lamps. Where exactly the splices are, who knows, but in stock config they simply daisy chain right at the socket.

[BerniniCaCO3]

thanks, that should help a lot. It's getting dark now but I'll do this tomorrow morning!
I was looking at the outer lamp; guess it is dual filament. I hadn't realized.

[VicCrownVic]

Like gadget said, 2 diff lights.
One connecter should look like you posted:
|_| (High and Low)
and the other like:
| | (High only) iirc.

I assume this the info from a post in another thread and a post from yet another thread is correct the High/Low connector should look like this:

Black(ground)|_|Red(low)
...............Green(high)

My shop manual didn't go into any detail on this connector that I could find, and my EVTM had no figure available for this connector.
I'd go out and look at mine but it's dark and cold out, if I remember in the morning I can take a look to make sure the above is correct.

[VicCrownVic]

I remembered, I checked my headlight connector this morning before I left for work and the above is correct from the back of the connector/looking at the back of the headlight.

If you are looking at the face of the connector it would be:

[BerniniCaCO3]

Just an update!

I was being ****ing lazy, and waited to fix them until just yesterday.
It was also cold outside, and I was getting frustrated...

Turned out that the basic relay wiring diagram I was using --the one that came with the new relays/harnesses-- was patently false!
So I was wiring exactly as stated and wondering why it wasn't working!

Found some other diagrams online, pulled out the battery this time to get a proper amount of space, used the diagrams you guys provided (most helpful) to triple check that I hadn't mixed up the low and high beams (i.e., the low would come on when I turned on the high beam switch and vice versa),
and voila it works!

Also-- I found a friend of a friend with a garage. All the difference in the world, to not have a -15F windchill while you're trying to think and trace wires.

[sly]

+1 garage time. It's the only way.