[DeTomaso] Headlights

MikeLDrew at aol.com MikeLDrew at aol.com
Fri Sep 16 22:24:46 EDT 2011


In a message dated 9/16/11 19 11 35, bill at incendium.com writes:


> All is good. Back from my first 100 mile trip. Only problem is it took 
> about
> 10 minutes to long, therefore, yup, I turned the lights on, park lights
> work, low beam ok, hi beam ok, yup you guessed it, when I turned them off
> the damn things stayed up. How do I get them down ?
> 

Did the lights turn off, but just stay up?

It could be a mechanical problem, or an electrical one.   Typically the 
headlights fail because people install super-duper powerful lamps in place of 
the weak, original sealed-beam lamps.   A fundamental design flaw in the 
Pantera electrical architecture is that all the power for the lamps passes 
through the switch on the dash.   More powerful lamps demand more current, which 
melts the cheesy British-made switch.

The cure is to install relays for both the low- and high-beam circuits.   
That way, the switch on the dash merely turns the relays on and off, and the 
power for the lamps just passes through the relays and not the switch 
itself.

The other distict possibility is that you've suffered a mechanical failure. 
  The headlight motor drive mechanism uses the same cheesy plastic drive 
gear that the windows use.   Over time, that gear becomes brittle and cracks 
and falls apart, which can jam the headlights (or windows).

There is a manual raising/lowering mechanism.   Open the hood, and on the 
left side, just behind the radiator, you'll see a black knob sticking out.   
Push inwards on that knob (that is, push it towards the outside of the car), 
against a light spring, and then start turning.   It is a very low-geared 
thing, so it will take about eleventy billion turns to lower the lights.

Another real possibility is a limit switch failure.   When you turn on the 
lights, current goes to the motor to raise them until a contact is made, on 
the up-switch, which then shuts off power.   When you lower the lights, the 
same thing happens on the down-switch when the lights go all the way down.

If your down limit switch fails, it thinks that the lamps are already all 
the way down, when they're not.   That could well be your problem here.

People with far more electrical smarts than I have will have to tell you 
how to troubleshoot/bypass the limit switches.

Good luck, and please keep us posted!

Mike


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