The other night, I took apart the steering column cover to see if I could figure out why my high beams didn't work. I found a black ground wire that wasn't plugged in, so I plugged that in. I also found a little white plug that was unplugged. I chased it down on the wiring diagram and determined it's the seat belt buzzer. I plugged it in out of curiosity (my aftermarket seatbelts don't have wiring for the buzzer, so I wasn't going to plug it in permanently). I turn on the ignition and, OMG, what an
obnoxious sound! It's like someone wrapped tape around a bicylcle bell and wired it so that it rang constantly. This is one thing the PO did that I completely understand.
After that, I tried the high beams and no go. I had read up on this on lancisiti.net and apparently the high beam stalk acts as a flash-to-pass signal (on U.S. market Scorpions) as well. That didn't seem to work either. Everything I read about non working lights/dim lights/weird electrics boils down to a bad ground. I chased down every ground I could find. I took the negative battery cable off the body, cleaned it up, and re-earthed it. I found a ground under the dash by the fuse box. Cleaned and re-earthed. I found two grounds by the headlights. Those looked a bit rusty, so I had high hopes cleaning these would help. I had done the one in the engine compartment by the left tail lamp awhile ago. I even took the ground strap off the transaxle and cleaned it up (man, was that
funky). Turned on lights. No high beams.
I gave up for the night and did more reading. In my reading, I discovered that the high beams only work when the ignition is ON. I'd been testing them with the ignition off. Since the fuel sender was out of the car, there was no way for me to test this, but I noted it.
That evening, I also had picked up a known working sender off eBay... and it arrived today. It went in with little drama I now have a working fuel gauge. w00t! My wife is grateful that the tank is buttoned up again and the garage doesn't smell of petrol. Since I had the fuel gauge issue worked out, I decided to start Sofia and pull her out and let her warm up. I tested the lights, and they worked nicely...brighter than I remember them being. Possibly cleaning the grounds did help matters a bit. I tried the high beam flasher, and it worked! So I tried the high beam and it also worked. So, that was likely the problem the entire time...I didn't RTFM...DOH!
This leaves only a couple more things for me the sort out. The nose band is warped, so I'm taking it to my body guy to have it sorted out in the next couple of days. The roof still won't close because the vinyl is too tight. I'm taking that to the trimmer that put it on the frame for me and see if he can either sort that out or make a new one from scratch.
Then...smog.
tJ