VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1929-1932 1931 Independence AE Headlight Wring

Does the high beam foot switch turn both filaments on at the same time? Also I cannot see my wiring for the footswitch without removing the floor board. I am trying to establish which wires go to which connections on the foot switch, I know both high beam wires go to the foot switch. According to the schematic one is in the front (front of car) I need to know which is the high beam connection to the headlight. I have wiring restored with hand written tags. The wire with no markings states high beam. I have a red dashed wire and also a black dashed wire.
I cannot get ALL of the lights to work. The light bulbs work when bench tested inside the headlight assembly. It is when I try to connect the bayonet connector into the back of headlight I am having problems.

Thank you in advance.

The power from the light switch goes to the center terminal. Really doesn't matter which of the other two wires is on a specific outside terminal. If you end up with one headlight on HIGH and the other low, just remove and turn one bulb 180 deg. and they will be the same.

Your problem may be in the bayonet connectors or the sockets in the headlights. If you have a test light or VOM you can test each contact in the connector to determine if wiring to that point is okay. If not then it will be necessary to find the problem. Same for the headlight sockets and wiring. If needed the Filling Station sells headlight wiring harnesses. They had been out of stock for the past couple of years. Now back available and are manufactured by a VCCA member.

It is also necessary to make sure that each headlight is grounded to the headlight bar and the bar grounded as well. If you think you have a ground problem you can run a jumper wire to ground or the negative battery terminal.

Found right combination with trial and error. Installed headlight with bayonet connector in place and conduit . Cut wires at end of conduit to test.

Used all original materials for wiring . Repaired brass connector to headlight bucket. Tab broke off from bending too much. Cut out brass and soldered new piece in place with tab. Also had to make new brass contact using a 7/16 brass tack; grinding down to match original, adding solder to match doming of original. Added ground wires and screw clamp to hold ground wires.

Thanks Chipper for walking thru this process. Lights on.

Glad to have been a teeny bit of help. Sometimes it gets confusing. Stopping and getting help can eliminate waste in both dollars and time. Many of us have already made the mistakes and hopefully learned from them. No need for others to repeat the process.

BTW, the 2 filaments in the bulb are same wattage. However one filament is supposedly centered in the bulb and the other filament is off center. So on high beam the "centered" filament is on, projecting maximum light from the parabolic reflector. When the off center-low beam filament is on, reflector deflects light downward at lower intensity. Elementary dear Watson (or was it Edison)!

The two filaments may mot be of the same watage (candle power). The original bulbs were 21 C.P. for both flaments. Bulbs were available with 32 C.P. for the high beams. The original bulbs did not have the low beam filament off set to swing some of the light to the right side, that was a later improvement.
Only one of the filaments "light" at a time, the generator would not support more then that..