custom headlights....

Okay so I'm trying to figure out my headlight plug .... I have two small-sized, lower-draw headlights I want to use in place of the single, giant, nasty stock one.

Now when I was just out in the shop, I'm pushing my leads into various holes on the plug .... I only get voltage out of ONE pin on the plug. Is the headlight's high/low selector switching grounds to switch which is lit? Or am I completely misunderstanding the stock wiring?

Or does that giant nasty gauge cluster I got rid of have something to do with it?

I can see on the electrical diagram that it very definitely goes into the nasty gauge cluster that I got rid of .... but i assume that's only to light the "high" bulb on there.... I can't figure any other reason it would possibly be a good idea to run it that way.

Anybody done this? Used two, two-wire lights instead of the one giant stock one?

 

Okay. So i just went out and did some probing .... Now i'm super confused, and I KNOW that the gauge cluster is my issue. Now I just need help figuring out how to bypass it. =)



#4 in my horrible drawing above, is always hot.

When I ground the headlight to #5, it's very, very bright.
When I ground the headlight to #2, it's significantly dimmer, and my brake (NOT tail like i thought) light turns on. (Tail light hasn't been working again yet, was leaving that for after the headlight was fixed, but apparently I found part of the problem.)

No reaction when grounding the light to numbers 1,3, or 6.

Ideas?

Edit: I should say, too. that #4 is the green wire, #5 is the black (presumably the constant ground). So anybody that has a better diagram than me can hopefully figure out what is what from that.

 

If #5 is the constant ground, why wouldn't you go from there to the other sockets?
It seems you went from the always hot #4 looking for a ground, #5.
Just a thought.

 

Well, hound, I initially was doing it that way. But I only get power out of #4, no matter what position the dimmer switch is in.

At this point, I'm not too worried about having a high-beam, as my "low beam" bulb is a LOT brighter than my old high beam ever was, but I just really need to figure out how to make my tail and brake light work again, heh.

 

So After some more digging, everything I can find on any diagrams says yellow with green stripe is high beam, and green with red stripe is low beam. These wires do not seem to exist anywhere on my harness. This just keeps getting more and more interesting!

 

that is what i saw yesterday on my wiring diagram, which didn't match what you had, so i gave up.
the diagram also says your bike has a secondary headlight.

 

My bike did have a secondary light housing on it, but as the PO lost the bulb for it I just took it off.

The only thing I can figure is that I lost a wiring pigtail during my winter's shenanigans? I think I'm just gonna give up and try to re-wire the stuff that I need to have her street-legal.

 

I just removed my "fish finder" from my bike.
The low beam wire colours before they head into the "fish finder" are white/red, blue and ground. To get my high beams I spliced the green and yellow wires from the dimmer switch to the low beam wires.
This is from memory as I did this a couple weeks ago and have done a ton of troubleshooting since. If you're still stuck I can remove my headlight and double check.
In order to get my tail lights and brake lights working, I had to splice a few more wires together as the "finder" did this before it was taken off.
The blue/white wire from the tail lights was just the warning light for the "finder".
The yellow/white is the brake lead and the blue is the constant on.
Hope this helps/makes sense.
I'm learning as I go so take what I say with a pound of salt...
PS mine is an '81 seca as well...

 

The computer monitor is part of the problem. Or at least, it contributes one of the 4 wires. The computer pushed a "test" current through the bulb filaments to measure resistance. If your bulb was blown, it would read as an "open" circuit and trigger the warning light.

You can disregard that wire if you're removing the computer like Hog did. All you should need is ground, low and high beam wires which pass through the lo/hi beam switch on the left switch pod, but originate from the computer monitor.

The headlight plug comes FROM the computer monitor. All 4 wires. If you removed the gauge, then of course you can't find the wires.

 

Holy crap man you're my hero. I'm heading to the garage RIGHT NOW to check this out!!!!!

Sushi_biker, very good info there, thanks for verifying what I thought was the case, I was tearing my hair out trying to figure that out for sure!