1998 Civic LX passenger Side Headlight is dim, but driver side if fine - Changed bulb and that didn't work - I assume that I'm not getting enough voltage or have corroded ground - I believe G201 would be the ground for the passenger headlight, but can't find it - Where is G201 located?

Does the passenger side headlight have a separate fuse? If yes, what is the location

Thanks?

 

There are independent fuses for Left and Right headlights... Low and High beam... inside the car in the under-dash fuse box. The grounding point for the passenger headlight is found on the body just behind each headlight... basically the engine bay side of the fender. It is a 10mm headed bolt passing through a metal ring terminal at the top of a white plastic rectangular box with many ground wires coming out of the bottom of it and merging into the chassis harness. If you have a "wire tuck", this may have been moved or modified and you will have to look elsewhere and discover it. Chances are good that this is NOT properly grounded... loose bolt, paint in the threaded area making poor contact, or not grounded at all and hanging free somewhere. Continued use under the conditions that you have described causes increased heat in the driver's side wiring and will lead to melted wiring and headlight plugs. Find it and fix it.

 

JRCivic1,

Thanks for the reply

Did some testing tonight - Using volt meter I ran these tests:

Tried ground off battery to low beam socket - Got 14 volts on one and close to zero on other two

Tried ground off battery to high beam socket - Got 14 volts on one and close to zero on other two

Tried the ground wire on socket to low beam on socket and got 14 volts

Tried the ground wire on socket to low beam on socket and got 14 volts

I'm stumped

Here is a picture of the light - See how dim the passenger side is

 

Are your bulbs identical? If you turn your high beams on, what happens?

 

I took two bulbs and exchanged them between driver side and passenger side - Driver side was always 5 X brighter - Turning lights to bright setting, the driver side increased lighting output, while the passenger side didn't change much

Picture below (they are not placed inside headlight housing for this picture)

I don't know what to try now......

 

If you're getting the same 14v to both bulbs, then it's time to clean the grounds.

 

Since I'm getting 14 volts using the socket ground to the socket low beam and socket ground to socket high beam, wouldn't that mean that the headlight ground is good?

Thanks for the help

 

Test resistance from the ground wire at the bulb to the bolt holding your radiator stay in place. Repeat the test on the driver side, using the bolt for the air conditioner condenser stay. I'd bet money you'll get a noticeably higher reading from the passenger wire than you do from the driver wire. Voltage tests don't answer questions for grounds - resistance tests do.

 

Did a quick test and passenger side was higher - The person who fixed my headlight wire after it was chewed by a ground squirrel made his own ground instead of using the factory one by headlight - I cleaned it before I did my testing above, but cleaned it after I took this picture below

In the picture, I believe the ground is the red wire in the middle of the picture (it is a screw with a metal loop connected to the red wire)

 

Stop guessing. Do resistance tests. And if that's your idea of clean, I really hope you don't work in an emergency room.

 

I see rust, and I see a red wire hanging around. Red usually means positive, get a dmm.

 

Tony

What is DMM? The person that did the repair used red wire for ground- I did clean-up the area around the red wire

 

DDM. Voltmeter. Multimeter. It has multiple names. He's telling you the same thing I told you. And no, you really didn't clean that connection up at all. It still looks like ****.

 

Question is why did he repair it? did someone cut it up to do some crazy halo swapped headlights?