My lights suck.

[Z Excellence]

Dave made me a harness for my 76 280Z an its one of the best upgrades for the money that I've ever done. I also put on some sylvania silver star headlights with the new harness. Fantastic!

[Zs-ondabrain]

I'm not that familiar with the 280Z schematics but the headlight wire colors are the same. ZANTHUS, the white, 3 wire switch on the turn-signal assembly, is the headlights HI-LO switch. Make sure the the center wire is getting contact to each of the side wires with each flick of the switch.

At the plugs, (Round white 3-wire plugs) either in the engine compartment or in front of the radiator, the red/white is the hi beam wire and the red/black is the low beam wire. On the right headlight plug the solid red is the power wire, on the left headlight plug the red/yellow is the left headlights power wire. The lo and hi beam wires are negatives when activated.

Your BEST diagnostic plan would be to turn on the HI beams, and start pulling relays around the car, one at a time, till the highbeams go out. When they go out, you'll be in the right area to find the low beam relay. replace the lowbeam relay with the HI beam relay and see if the lo beams work. If they do, then find another relay (at Nissan or local auto parts store) and replace the bad one.

My Headlight relay upgrade harness will do NOTHING for a system that does'nt work properly to begin with.

The fuses in the fusebox are for Left and Right headlight, not hi and lo beam. JFYI.

let us know what ya find.

Dave.

[zanthus]

Thanks for all the info I'll probably do it later on this morning. But now my parking lights are blowing fuses and I haven't done anything but replace the bulbs. Do any of you have an idea where I can start looking for the relay for the headlights? I'd love to be able to drive the car sometime soon.

[Ramses]

If your wiring harnesses are in as bad as shape as mine were. Do not drive the car. Do not turn anything electrical on. Pull the wiring harnesses and fix or replace the wires as needed. I had to unravel all 3 of mine along with 3 others and merge them together to get one that was not cut in a million places. It is amazing what people will do in order to get an older car to run, without spending any money. I found speaker wire powering my front headlights. Sad, Sad Sad.

[zanthus]

I did find out that my turn signals weren't working because someone had jacked up that little piece of harness that goes to the middle console. I'm in the process of going to Danny's Datsun probably sometime next weekend and getting a harness from one of his cars. Here's hoping I only need one.

[TomoHawk]

FWIW, there aren't any relays involved with the headlights on a 78 280Z. The power for the headlights comes from a fuse link, to the headlight combo switch, then to the fuses (one per side) then back through the combo switch, then through the connectors behind the glovebox, then to the lamps ( through the common wire) then back to the dimmer switch for hi & low beam.

You really should take your glovebox out and pull off all those connectors behind there to give the pins ( not blades) a good shot of DeOxit 100. I noticed an improvement in the lighting on my car after I did that.

Also, the "big round fuse thing" for the blinkers isn't really a fuse. It's a switch that's controlled by a bi-matallic strip inside. It makes & breaks the circuit for the turn signals and hazard lights, and the current flowing through it is what determines the flashing rate, which is why the lights flash faster when a bulb is out, or slower with new or extra bulbs.

Zanthus, are you trying to replace just that one part of the harness, that goes to the console? The wiring on a 280Z is in several large sections like engine bay/front, dash, interior, and rear, so you may just want to repair (properly) what you have, unless you want to splice in a whole section.:eek: Fortunately the hazard switch has its own connection into the dash wiring harness.

thxZ

[zanthus]

Thats what I was going to try and do but since I still have so many wires that are cut I'm going to atleast look at a hopefully unmolested wiring harness to figure out where my wires go and see if I'm missing anything. Thanks for the info about the relays I was really confused on that I replaced the flasher already and the turn signals didn't work after that. I'll try some more things and let people know incase they have the same problem.

[Neumeier]

I just purchased my 1978 280z a few weeks ago. On the drive home, I noticed that the headlights did not work but the high beams did. The next day I was looking over the engine compartment area, and noticed the fusible links. There are two of them on the 280z, bolted to the passenger side shock tower. Normally they have white plastic covers on them, to protect the links from corrosion (they are right underneath the hood vent). Mine had no covers. Anyway, I jiggled all of the fusible links, not thinking much of it at the time. Well, the next time I drove the car at night the headlights worked fine.

You might disconnect the battery, clean all of the fusible link connectors, reconnect the batter, and give it a try. After 30 years, the connectors can get alot of oxidation on them. Can't say much about your other electrical problems. Sounds like you should carefully look over the whole car, inspect the wiring, and make any neccessary repairs.

To give you an idea of what I mean, I had a problem with my '87 VW van where it would not start when it was cold. After trying many things, I measured the voltage at the coil which turned out to be about 8 volts instead of 12. It was a dirty connector. I sanded the hell out of that connector and it did not improve. Then I took the connector off of the coil, sandblasted it, reinstalled it, and it worked perfect (read 12 volts). In the same car the fuel injection harness wore through from rubbing against the firewall, shorting an important wire to the idle control circuit that, coincidentally, also ran to the coil. This caused the car to intermittently die. Cars can be lots of fun . . .

Good Luck!

John

[cheney119]

Fusible link is for both high and low beam lights, if the high beams are ok then it's not the fusible link. I tried removing fusiblel link and neither high or low would work in 78 z. I say it pretty much has to be the switch, I cleaned mine and the low beams work intermittenly now.

[Cornbreadxd]

my 78 280z has this problem now, it just started today, headlights were fine yesterday and now only the highbeams work, i'll have to check the switch in the morning but its hard to work in the cold.:mad:

[7277]

also check the ground connection on the steering collumn combo switch. that was my problem in a previous post 'help with headlights'

[zanthus]

So I'm bringing this back from the dead for ideas. Until recently I had not had the money to work on my z thus the old post and only now fixing the relative problems.

Headlights work, yay me, but I now still have the problem with the turn signals. I have located the problem to the hazard switch, long story short I had no power to the column switch but the hazards do work so I took a jumper wire from the positive cable on the battery and hooked it to the wire coming out of the hazard that is supposed to go to the column switch. Low and behold the turn signals started working.

How am I supposed to repair it? I've already taken the switch apart and cleaned the contacts. All the wire and solder looks good (not to self, forgot to check continuity between contacts). That's all I could find with a search of what to do. Anyone else have any ideas? Something a little more in depth isn't that hard for me to do.

I'd actually like to drive the bucket on the road this summer and its so close to being legal.

Thanks