My lights are working, and it cost me nothing!

[Porka944s]

A month or so back i developed a problem, my lights went down and didnt come back up, they would switch on in both stages but stay down, my dash lights also got stuck on and drained the battery.
I took it to an independant who took 2 weeks to spend one hour looking at it, they tried a new ignition and a new light switch, fortunately it was neither so all i owed them was an hours labour.
Im an engineer by trade but cant ever be arsed to fiddle with things like this, but i got the hump paying 60 odd quid an hour for them to bumble through with it. So i thought id have a look.
Thanks to you guys a got a pdf of the wiring diagram, and started thinking. A few weeks ago i checked fuses got sidetracked, and have been driving around, relay out lights wound up, but tonight i decided to have a look as id been thinking about it and thought i worked it out.
Unfamiliar with some symbols on the diagram i came to the conclusion that the headlight motor has positonal contacts. motor drives one direction only so it drives till it hits one contact, stops, then drives to the next contact and stops for the down position. I reckon when it went wrong intertia of the mech drove it past where it was supposed to stop, shorting the dash lights on, and making the circuit unable to get to the position it needed to drive up. After winding the lights up a few times and switching the ignition on with the light switch off, it finally drove to the correct stop position, now they are working again. So a warning have a fiddle first, trust your instincts it may end up cheaper.

 

[Frenchy]

Well done you ! saved a quid or two there, i am an engineer also but like to tinker !

 

[Gavin944s2]

Most these little electrical & mechanical jobs , just need a tinker.A process of illimination & common logic, a simple clean up or kick start. Well done [] keep em on the road

 

[DivineE]

I love this about the 944. I've said it before (many times) but 99% of the time if you get a problem with the 944 it is something silly causing it rather than a failed component and it ends up being free I've fixed so many things myself by cleaning contacts and the like that now when something goes wrong I no longer panic and just look for the obvious solution.

The car is so simple and well made you can buy a terrible example (like my first lux) and your still very unlucky if anything actually goes wrong!

My modern German car (Audi S3) was a nightmare! Any time you heard a noise it cost you a million pounds and nothing was ever easy to diagnose let alone fix! The engine never ever ran right despite me replacing every sensor, hose, valve, solenoid and wire you could imagine. When I noticed it span the front wheels and thought there must be an electrical fault with the 4wheel drive it turned out the main pressure plate in the Haldex diff had snapped in two. The gearbox started to crunch on a synchro slightly if you changed too fast so I though oh well its not that bad then a week later the gearbox failed, it suddenly started getting hot one day and it turned out the water pump impellar had snapped into tiny little pieces. I heard I slight noise from the engine bay after braking hard for a roundabout and it turned out the engine had sheared off a mounting and cut into the cambelt. All this in 3months of ownership and on a car with low miles and a full service history! I'm never EVER selling my 944 again!