TheSamba.com :: View topic - Extra wires in factory headlight harness?

Wed Aug 20, 2008 10:41 pm

So I've been doing the initial wiring on my '57 Single and i noticed something really weird. The headlight harness seems to have two extra wires on each side. These wires are both red in color and are inside the factory sheathing. There are the normal yellow (low), White (high) and Grey (park) on each side in addition to the extras. The red wires do not seem to have a terminus inside the cab that I can find, either. It's like this on both sides.

BTW, everything works just fine with the extra wires disconnected.

I've done a LOT of wiring on VWs over the years, but I've never seen this before. Not that it effects anything, I'm really just curious what they're doing there.

Wed Aug 20, 2008 10:52 pm

Digging into an early one and you're coming up stumped.

The only thing I see that's unusual is the fact that they are pink, usually they are brown.

That's the wire that connects the ground on the headlight bulb to to the parking light bulbholder. It just loops in the harness and comes back out....I'm sure if you test it with a ohm meter you'll see that. This is really just the ground for the headlight bulb, since the parking light is screwed directly to the bucket which grounds on the tab on the body to headlight ring.

Wed Aug 20, 2008 10:54 pm

OK, more info...

I cut open the sheath inside the cab, where it comes in from the headlight bucket. No red wires! This didn't make any sense, so I went back and pulled on the pair of red wires and out they came...like this:

So it's a single wire, folded in half, and the folded section installed a few inches into the the factory harness on both sides. It really appears to have been done like this at the factory.

WTF?

Wed Aug 20, 2008 10:56 pm

///Mink wrote: OK, more info...

I cut open the sheath inside the cab, where it comes in from the headlight bucket. No red wires! This didn't make any sense, so I went back and pulled on the pair of red wires and out they came...like this:

So it's a single wire, folded in half, and the folded section installed a few inches into the the factory harness on both sides. It really appears to have been done like this at the factory.

WTF?

Yeah, that's how it should be. Why'd you cut it apart? =)

Wed Aug 20, 2008 10:58 pm

campingbox wrote: Digging into an early one and you're coming up stumped.

The only thing I see that's unusual is the fact that they are pink, usually they are brown.

That's the wire that connects the ground on the headlight bulb to to the parking light bulbholder. It just loops in the harness and comes back out....I'm sure if you test it with a ohm meter you'll see that. This is really just the ground for the headlight bulb, since the parking light is screwed directly to the bucket which grounds on the tab on the body to headlight ring.

Haha, just figured that one out. :oops:

So other than German pedantic neatness, why would they do it that way?

Wed Aug 20, 2008 11:00 pm

///Mink wrote: campingbox wrote: Digging into an early one and you're coming up stumped.

The only thing I see that's unusual is the fact that they are pink, usually they are brown.

That's the wire that connects the ground on the headlight bulb to to the parking light bulbholder. It just loops in the harness and comes back out....I'm sure if you test it with a ohm meter you'll see that. This is really just the ground for the headlight bulb, since the parking light is screwed directly to the bucket which grounds on the tab on the body to headlight ring.

Haha, just figured that one out. :oops:

So other than German pedantic neatness, why would they do it that way?

Just to keep things tidy. I'm not certainly exactly when they stopped doing it that way, but the later ones have seperate ground wires.

Wed Aug 20, 2008 11:00 pm

campingbox wrote:

Yeah, that's how it should be. Why'd you cut it apart? =)

Well, the park light wire on the right side had burned as they often do, so it had basically wrecked the sheath - I didn't cut it so much as I peeled it open along the burn line. :)

Wed Aug 20, 2008 11:06 pm

That's normal, it's the ground wire as Greg mentioned. It just loops back because the headlight bucket itself grounds out via its mounting screw.

A lot people unplug it from the parking light and then ground it via a drilled screw directly to the headlight bucket. This grounds the headlight nicely while leaving the parking light bulb to ground out via the headlight bucket mounting screw. My '63 is like this.