No headlights

[mr white]

Hello Everyone,
I decided to take my 181 out today for the first time since October. It was very nice today. As dusk started to set tonight I turned my headlights on and nothing! I drove straight home. I pulled one headlight out, armed with only a test light at the moment and found power on all three terminals. 30 signal is present on high beam, low beam, and ground. Ran out of time to chase further tonight. Any ideas of what to look at? Relay possibly stuck?


Thanks in advance.

[74 Thing]

Check grounds-should be in the trunk behind the headlight area. Open up the fuse panel area and look for a loose wire etc..

[rockerarm]

Hi.
One would normally not see bad grounds on both headlights at the same time but anything is possible. The reason you may be seeing 12v at the ground wire with plug attached is the 12v is present at the low beam wire and thru the light filament and is present at the ground wire looking for a ground location.
Might be a bit easier to unplug and individually, with the test light, if you have 12v at yellow low beam wire and the brown wire is providing a path to ground.
It is quite possible to have multiple voltage issues within the same circuit such as your headlight circuit. So, you may have to isolate the different sections for this, meaning low beam circuit, high beam circuit, and ground circuit.
Finally, remember the later cars have the X circuit from the ignition switch which is a dedicated circuit for the headlights.
Hope this helps, Bill.