Hello everyone, new to the site and hoping to get some help on a potential power issue. I'm finally making some movement on a Camaro I've stored around the county for the past 17 years and after jumping the car took it for a quick spin. My Gen light stayed on the entire time and my headlights wouldn't come on at all, parking lamps worked fine though. My hi-beams worked and when I went from highball back to low-beams, one headlight worked.

Well the engine died under load and I had to get it jumped again to get it home. Had the alternator and battery both tested, battery wad completely dead, alternator was good. So while charging battery we replaced the headlights with newer models just for clarity and brightness and both high and low beam worked.

Now after reinstalling everything my gen light is good but one headlight still doesnt work on lowbeam. Horn is also essentially dead. I'm about to check all wiring to see if a mouse or something got to chewing and is grounding anything out, but want to put the question out to the community for some experience based suggestions.

Thanks everyone for any help you can provide, I might stumble upon the answer between wiring checks and a deeper dive of the forums. Either way I'll update!

 

Most common failure points are grounds.
How old is the battery? Has the car been upgraded to a one wire alternator or does it still have a separate regulator and if so was it checked?
What type headlights did you install?

 

Battery is roughly 3 years old but has had almost 0 use due to storage. Both battery and single wire alternator were checked and called good after battery charged.

Put in some halgon bulbs, but its acting the same as the originals. I will confirm all ground and clean up posts while I'm at it, since it's intermittent I was looking at relays or chaffed/chewed wires. A weak ground makes sense, would not shock me to find something corroded or loose.

 

You need to be looking at voltages at different points in the circuit. You may what to check out a youtube video on how to test for voltage drop. Its is the best way to check out these old circuits.

On a side note, these are old mechanical switches, sometimes just flipping the switch a bunch of times will knock off any dirt/corrosion that may be on the contacts. This would be for both the headlight switch and the hi/low beam switch.

 

Thanks for the tips, I'll do the voltage drop and check grounds today. Shouldn't be difficult considering how exposed and open the engine bay is.

 

OP

Stock, the full 12v to headlights goes through the headlight switch. What many do is install a headlight relay harness. I got mine at Speedway for around $30. Plug & play. No cutting or splicing any stock wires.

If your PS headlight otherwise works fine high & low beam, the harness uses that plug and you abandon everything else in the stock headlight harness. The headlight switch now just "triggers" relays that get their +12vdc direct from the AUX buss on PS near battery. Your headlights, especially your new halogen, will be considerably brighter as will all other lights in the car. The new relays will need to mount near the battery. Mine are on core support under my close out panel.

If your current wiring is corrupted to the PS headlight, you will need to resolve that first. The stock DS headlight socket is unused with the relay kit

 

Color me ignorant, but what is PS headlight? I cannot get my head to unsee power steering no matter how much I try.

 

Ha,you're not alone.

 

Well couldn't figure out how to gain access to the headlight switch but it dawned on me it shouldn't be switch side if both headlights share the same signal. While working wiper motor and horn gremlins I found the lowbeam wire on the original wire harness broken. Should have been first place I looked but I was assuming it had to be a shared problem among the others.

On the upside, I have gone through most wires and grounds. Found several disconnected wires that I have no recollection of where they go, and found some things to fix and re-hookup.

Thanks again for the advice, I'm probably going to buy an aftermarket light harness if the brightness is lacking still.