Alright. So I installed JDM foglights two years ago in my '99 Legacy. A few months ago I was driving at night and the driver's side fog light started flickering on and off. Eventually it quit entirely So I figured that since I had to retrofit this harness by splicing it to the JDM harness from the lights into the USDM harness connected to the car, that one of the solders was coming undone.

 

I get under there today and the solder looked a little gray on the grounding wires. I flaked it off and twisted the wire back together. Tested the lights. No change. So I undid the other connection and re-twisted it back together. No change. I then got out my wire testers and tried that. Nothing. So I'm assuming that these lights don't work because they aren't get power.

 

Thought process:

 

Fuse: located in internal fuse box. Only one fuse, not blown, and the other light does work afterall.

 

Grounding wire: try grounding the light to a part of the car. No change.

 

Light bulbs: (remember this is JDM, so there are two) it flickered on and off when I initially began having problems so thats not a light bulb burning out. The probability of both bulbs burning out at the same time is also very slim. I checked the one. It was fine.

 

I am out of ideas here. Does anyone know something that I don't know?

 

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

 

~ Ben

Did you pull the harness tight anywhere, or maybe nudge a curb to stretch it?

 

What I'm getting at is, an internal break in a wire. If you're using a powered test light, check through your harness for continuity, by poking the sharp lead thru the insulation. If it's unpowered click on the switch, then test the length of the harness for power.

I don't think that I stretched it too far. However, I could not tell if there is a break in the wires as the are covered by an insulsation casing.

 

And perhaps my wire tester from the 80s should be replaced, because there is no way that it could poke through wiring.

 

Thanks for the ideas. I could have quite a bit of work ahead of me.

Nah, wiring is just as simple as plumbing. If the pipe is broken, there's no flow. You just gotta find the broken pipe & patch it

The problem/frustration lies in getting to all of that wiring.

I suggest you get a test light probe so you can check where the voltage is getting to, and isn't getting to. This takes the guess work out of the testing. Having the proper test equipment makes problems like this easy to test out.

yeah, wiring's the easy part . . . for me it's the "fuel, spark, air" thing that gets complicated

 

just to give you an idea, i noticed that the driver's side headlamp was quite a bit dimmer than the passenger's side on my XT6. 1st thought was a grounding issue, and as i was investigating that, i stumbled across an almost completely eroded main headlight connection right there on the driver's side. culprit? battery acid at some point caused that complete plastic connection at the back of the lamp to disintegrate, barely keeping a connection after 15 minutes, three solders (3 connections at that one spot) and some heat shrink, life was good

chris

I have this awful feeling that I am going to have to remove the bumper in order to effectively work on this. And I really don't feel like it.

Can't you just pull the "splash pan" under the bumper?

I can, but the bolts are plastic and I don't want to break them and not be able to put it back. Ya know what I mean? But, perhaps that would be better than undoing my whole bumper.

 

 

What we're looking at here.

As it turns out my wire tester doesnt work at all.

Figured it out. The USDM harness went bad. Thanks SIA. It does not make a tight connection anymore, so I guess I will cut it out and hardwire it. Of course I discovered this after I cut off wiring casing, removed my headlights, grille, etc. I then blew the fuse. Ooops. Guess I'll need one of those too.