Headlight delay

[gardnerteam]

I know there is a simple answer and then I can feel stupid, BUT, day or night, when I start my 02 D/A the headlights do not light on low beam even when I turn them on. I can switch to high beam and they are fine, but it takes about 45 sec to 1.5 minutes before the low beams will come on and work just fine. Only modification is JK harness which has worked perfectly since new and the vehicle now has over 50,000 miles. I know its stupid and I'm missing something, so someone please enlighten me. Thanks

[VA_Dmax]

It is my understanding that it takes about that long for the voltage to come back up after running the glow plugs and other items during start up. Mine does the same thing, the low beams come on, but they are pretty dim for about a minute, then the voltmeter jumps to 14 and everything is fine.

[Kennedy]

Just for grins, try swapping relays from one socket to the other and see what happens...

[gardnerteam]

The low beams have no light, and it is a new problem. Worked perfectly for 50,000 miles, then poof. So, JK, what do you mean by swapping relays?

[Kennedy]

There is a relay for high, and a relay for low. Swap the two from socket to socket.

Also check the pins where the oe harness plugs into mine. Sometimes the pins can get bent when installing...

[Modified]

I too had the KD Headlight Harness installed about a year, with no problems. Then, a couple of months ago, I started my truck in the dark, (no parking brake on), and the lights came on after about a minute. Shut the truck off, restarted truck, and it delayed on again. Scratched my head, and drove off.
Six blocks later, the lights went off, (low beam). I think the lights worked in high beam, but not positive. I inspected the KD Harness connections to the OEM Harness, and found one KD Harness Pin retracted from its connector. Plugged this pin back into the connector, and it seemed to snap into place. While reconnecting KD Harness Plug to OEM Plug, I made sure this pin didn't retract again.
Been working good ever since.

[Kennedy]

I believe that I've had maybe 2 or 3 harness kits total that were bad from new. Just needed a quick rework. Aside from that, the only other issues were handled by correcting grounds, or pin connections. Lost count how many of these things I haveout there, but it is a LOT!

[letsgo]

You may find that after a while a relay may become voltage sensative (eg, the relay may require 13.7Vdc in order to latch on, before it only required 12.3Vdc, this could be caused by the mechanical spacing of the relay arms becoming greater over time, thus requiring the greater voltage), so the 30 second full voltage delay doesn't help, also if rust migrates to the armature face of the relay you can get a poor magnetic attraction, I have seen this a few times, and the relay just gets tossed.

FYI the mechanical voltage regulator of the 50's and 60's required, tweeking the relay spring arms for fine tuning.

just a thought.

[ 10-10-2003, 05:46 AM: Message edited by: letsgo ]

[gardnerteam]

Swapping the relays didn't work. At 2 am Thurs morn I got up to go to Logan Utah (9 hours away) and low beams would not come on. Screwed with it for a hour, no luck, so merely cut the hot wires and high and low beam and hooked the low beam to the high beam hot. Worked like a charm over and back, much of it in the dark. Now I'll pull the harness apart and check. JK - quit being so defensive about the harness. LOL. It is one of the best and most reliable accessories available. Your skin is getting too thing! LOL!

[gardnerteam]

Finally got around to working on the headlight problem again. After an hour or so of checking everything, I decided to switch the relays again as it didn't change anything the first time. This time one relay worked and one did not. Ran a test on the relay itself, and it was bad. Decided to mount relays where they were easier to access behind the passenger headlight. Will now carry a spare as well.

[Modified]

Glad you found the problem. A spare is a good idea. If you didn't have a spare and the low beam relay failed, you could temporarily swap the high beam relay to get you home.
When I routed my harness, I tapped power from the junction block. I ran harness to driverside light first, and then the passenger side. I mounted both relays on the firewall, near driverside hood hinge, on two existing metric studs. Both relays are high and dry.