No head lights or front lights at all

Hi guys,
It's about 0 degrees out and i just came back from about an hour long trip. I noticed my high beam light on and really weird things happening. No modified electrical no issues at all til just now. I haven't pulled any fuses yet, just came in and started searching. I can't find anything similar...

it's a 96 and when the headlight switch is on there are no front lights at all only the rear red tail lights. The high beam indicator is constantly on and only the rear turning signals work (buzzer clicks really fast). Hazards dont' work, and like I said, NO lights in the front of the vehicle at all whether the high beam switch is on or off. Any help greatly appreciated, this is my DD and it needs to be fixed asap. Thanks!

Check the grounds, when my grounds were wonky I had
Constant high beam light
constant turn signal indicators

because the front lights were grounding through the cluster.

Other than that, suspect headlamp switch.

Get out your multimeter.

Thanks for the reply! Do you know offhand where the related grounds are under the hood? I forgot to mention that the left and right arrow lights and also the high beam light are ALL solid when the switch is turned on. I went out and pulled a few fuses, but don't even know which is the headlight fuse (gonna look that up now). But i pulled the hazard fuse and a few others on the right side but my fingers got too numb. I'm going to going back out in a bit here though.

start with the front turn signal sockets, the actual sockets have a ground tab on the side. Pull the rubber washer off to expose it from the front.

Then follow the black wire to where it's grounded, you'll find everything there.

I can't say exactly, because mine is an 87, and I'm sure your 96 is slightly different.

Now that you mention the turn signal indicators being on whenever the parking lamps are I'm sure that you have a ground issue.

If you do a search for "kastein" as the user name and grounds you'll probably find Ken's post listing all of the ground locations for the HO model years.

Me, kind of old school on lights.

Go and clean the headlight connectors, they get really crapped up and never get any maintenance. Now, check for power and ground to both head light connectors. If you have power and ground then check the lamps to see if they are burned out. If you don't have power or grounds solve for that.

There is also a plug that everything on the front clip goes though. I'd try to find that and make sure the connections aren't corroded. I can't remember if its on the left or right side.

Thanks a lot guys! I'm going to head out now and see what I can find.

on my 87 it's just behind the drivers side headlamp
but 87 /= 96 so it might be different.

87manche said:

on my 87 it's just behind the drivers side headlamp
but 87 /= 96 so it might be different.

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Thanks! My dad was over for about 20 minutes and we ran a wire from the batt. to a socket and i got the headlights back but that was it. I'm thawing my feet out for a little bit and will be going back. i took apart all the front lights and found that when the front driver parking light bulb was in, there was nothing, but with it out of the socket the front driver turning signal bulb lit up..? Anyway, I moved to trying to get the air box out because I can see the main connector under the box in that location with the 3 big connectors that are plugged in. 2 out of 3 of the airbox bolts will come out but not the one in the front driver corner! I might just break it or something, because I NEED to get to that location b/c it looks like that connector might be grounded right on the wheel well there. Prob in about 10 mins i'll be back at it. i wasnt dressed for this and actually stopped at my grandmothers on the way home. my dad has left, but he was of no help anyway... he wanted to just rig up a bunch of grounds to the sockets and call it done.

I'd bet that after cleaning everything and checking the harness you will have lights back.

Do you have a multimeter?

If not, invest $5 and get a cheap one. It will be very useful in the future.

What you need to do is pick a ground, set the meter to ohms, insert the red lead into the ground at the socket and touch the black lead to the negative battery terminal. If the reading is larger than 10 ohms or so then the grounds need attention.

You should probably just plan on cleaning/replacing/adding grounds anyway. 15 year old cars tend to have nasty grounds.

If you search you'll find everything you need to know.

Update: ok, I drove it home b/c i didn't have all of the tools i needed where i was. i got up here and finally got the airbox out. it turns out that that main connector was totally f'ed up! There is a blue/red wire on the headlight end of the connector that was broke. Also, there was a flesh colored wire on the main run connector that was broke but was corroded too, so it's prob been like this forever. ALL of the pins were really tarnished/corroded.

Now, if it had been the black wire that was broke, i'd be jumping for joy...i haven't looked up the blue/red wire, so idk if it's related or not. I sure hope so, otherwise this was all just an incidental problem that i now have to deal with. This thing has to be fixed b4 monday morning when i go to work.

I can post pics if anyone wants, but my question to you guys is....should I cut the wires and just bypass the connector? -i'm good with electronics and soldering in general, so it wouldn't be a big deal. the blue wire is severed right at the connector, so I doubt i can salvage it. Might be able to solder a post in it though and then solder the wire to that. I took pics to note what wires are where. Either way, I'm going to have to cut the wires between the front lights and the connector then splice those b/c i need to get the connector in doors to do all of that. Any advice welcome Oh yeah, and I found the 2 grounds on top of the wheel well, and jumped those with no luck, so I don't think it's either of those.

it's a blue wire that runs the parking lamps in my 87.

I would bypass the connector. I would probably just use watertight butt connectors crimped with a decent crimper.

Update: The connector and broken wire were definitely the problem! Finished last night around 1130pm. I was going to solder everything, but the old wire/new wire and 10 degree temperature just were not cooperating. I ended up using male & female connectors. I plan on rigging it up somehow today to try to keep water from getting on the connections, and then getting the airbox back in. Thanks a lot for all of the posts and help

Glad you got it figured out. Thanks for posting you solution.

OkieXJ said:

Glad you got it figured out. Thanks for posting you solution.

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No problem It would have taken a LOT longer if not for all the great help here on the forum! I got the airbox back in this morning and put everything back together. After seeing how corroded ALL of the connector pins were, I can't imagine how ANY were making contact at all. Below are some pics of what I found:

"What has been seen cannot be unseen!"

Fugly.