[glhs#116]

OK. This thing really wants to piss me off. I seem to have some sort of severe, I think they call it "voltage drop". Anyway, I'll explain.

I took off the dimmer switch. I have 12v to the centre (blue) wire. I tested the dimmer switch and it seems to do its job shunting the circuit either to the green or the tan wire depending upon its position. I then took the headlamps off. They are on a relay that triggers off the driver's side headlamp connector. No volts at the "relayed" headlamp connector terminals. I diconnected the relay stuff and measured straight off the factory headlamp terminals. I saw 12v there on either the high or low beam terminal depending upon the position of the dimmer. This was true for both headlamp connectors. Seemed good. So I tried the headlamps to see if they were bad. Nope. They light up if I wire them off the battery. I took the terminals out of the headlamp connectors and gave them a good clean. Still wouldn't light a bulb if a bulb was plugged in. Still show voltage if there isn't. Finally I tried measuring the voltage across the terminals with a bulb plugged in. I saw something like 3v and no light. Looked all over for a damaged wire or bad connection. All looks good. I tested the bulbs with one terminal plugged in and one on the harness. The earth side is good because if that side is in the harness connector and I jumper the hot side of bulb to battery it lights. However if the hot side of bulb is in the harness connector and I jumper the earth to the ground side of battery the light stays off. Having found that out I wondered how far back this went. I took off the dimmer switch again and took power straight from the blue wire feeding the dimmer switch and again I can measure 12v from the wire to a ground but I can't use it to light up a bulb. It's like it has power until it is under any load greater than a multimeter. The bulb doesn't even give a dim glow.

Now the other weird thing is this is out of the blue. Never had a problem with lights before. No dimness. No flickering. And all the lights are still just as good except the headlights. As mentioned before, changing out the headlight switch changed nothing. What is on the "feed" side of the headlight switch? But then again, if that were the case why do the side lights and tail lights and all continue to work fine?

Honestly. This is driving me mad.

Sam