Hey Scotty, i've got a little bit of an electrical problem on my 2005 Nissan Altima.
It's the 2L V4 with 168000 km.
The car's been well maintained and trouble free, except for one thing; I can't get the drivers side high beam to turn on. I've tried changing bulbs and fuses, that didn't work. It seems like there is no power getting to the plug, so I thought of wiring on a replacement
Was just wondering which wires were positive and negative?
This is what I plan on replacing it with;
Thank you for your time, I really appreciate the advice!
So it looks like when you switch on your high beams the high beam relay is energized and power goes to your fuse locations, #47 for your right hand side high beam, and fuse #48 for your left hand side high beam. (engine compartment fuse box)
The relay is working because the RH high beam comes on.
Maybe grab a test light and check both of the contacts on the top of fuse #48 for power when the high beams are on.
(Check the fuse map on the top of your fuse box to confirm that #48 is your LH high beam fuse location)
You may have no power there and it could possibly be just a corroded connection in the fuse box.
----------------------
| #47 | 10amp | Headlamp High RH, Daytime Running Lights |
| #48 | 10amp |
Headlamp High LH, Daytime Running Lights |
| R8 | Headlamp High Relay |
great pictures you found. Thank you.
I'm still trying to figure all this posting stuff out. I didn't mean to post 2 pics of the fuse test.
Fixed. Let me know if I can answer any questions or help at all.
https://carkiller.com/scottykilmer/qa/thanks/
I appreciate those kind words. I've been a fan of Scottys and his concept of helping regular people with car problems for years. I'm happy that he created this forum where we all can all "pitch-in" where we can
That's awesome, thanks for the pictures. I'll check them out later tonight.
If I have a problem with my fuse box... could I try using a cleaner? Or would I need a new box?
is there a problem to clean? Do you have flood damage or is the fuse lid missing?
No, the fuse lid has always been kind of loose but never missing. I'm just trying to figure out why my high beam refuses to turn on.
So I took out my test light and tried all the fuses related to my high beams; my light lit up for every single one of them.
This is the diagram off of my fuse box under the dash.
I'm at a loss. I'm not sure if maybe I have a broken wire somewhere, if replacing the pigtail will solve anything.
yes it sounds like a broken wire between the fusebox and the pigtail, and If I had to bet on it, I'd say the problem lies closer to the headlight end.
#1 It helps to have a multimeter or a wiring diagram
#2 That's a really horrible color scheme on that pigtail you bought. blue in DC circuits is almost always negative. But I'm guessing it's for the European market where yellow and green striped is for ground in household AC circuits. Whoever made it was too cheap to use proper wire.
#3 halogen bulbs don't care about polarity
#4 as long as the same wires go to the same holes in the connector, then you will have matched the old wiring exactly, right? The original wires are red + and black - as they should be. So just make sure + ends up on the same cavity in the connector.
Before you go cutting into the factor wiring, I would make sure there's actually power in the circuit.
Using test light or something to make sure there's even power on the fuse.
I did try with a small multimeter I bought and I didn't get a reading off of it.
The first picture (as far as I can tell, I bought the car used a year ago) is the factory wires. The other side still has the protective insulation on it, I just cut off the electrical tape so I could see if the previous owner may have tried to fix it before selling it to me.
I did try to see if someone else had to do this repair before but I got nothing on google either.
I did buy another pigtail but the wires seem thinner so I wasn't sure I wanted to trust it.
ok, you said you didn't get a reading. That means the pigtail probably won't help, but WHERE were you probing?
I was probing inside the pigtail, where the headlight would plug in... I stuck a spare 9005 bulb I had in there and nothing happened.
I also checked and replaced the fuse that was in the box, it didn't look bad but I wanted to rule out a bad fuse so I put a new one in there anyway.
yes probing the fuse will definitely help. Put your negative probe on neg battery terminal (or any exposed bare metal of the car), and the positive probe on the fuse. Test BOTH terminals.
Headlights use relays as well, so that could be another point of failure. Test this by swapping the relay with a different one.
I thought it could be a relay, when I was at NAPA the guy came out there and swapped it with another relay. That didn't seem to help either...
Other than it possibly being a computer issue i'm running out of ideas.
I'm gonna try testing the fuses again when I get home.