240Z High/Low Beam Switch Teardown

[hotsho111]

Hey, working on restoring my turn/headlight assembly on my 73 and hadn't really found a tear down of the high/low beam switch so I figured I'd post some pictures while I'm at it

The spring in the pin on the right is removable, i just didn't want them rolling away so I kept them attached.

Inside the plastic housing is a plastic triangle that the pin actually switches other end to the left or right side when you depress the switch. It's held in by a retaining pin but I didn't want to push my luck trying to get that out. At the tip of that is the spring and brass top, which is rocked back and forth against a little plate which connecst the circuit to the high or low beam. The bits on the right side of the picture are the high/low beam wiring (red/yellow and red/white wires) and the incoming power signal (black wire).

Here's a picture inside the switch housing:

The spring and cap go in the hole in the middle there. When you depress the switch, that pin on the left pushes against that white plastic piece and moves it to the left or right side of the housing

The actual rocker switch. The one in my car was broken into 3 pieces. Previous owner tried to glue them together but it eventually failed. For now I'm just going to try and glue them back together. That little diamond shaped plate rocks back and forth. Normally it will be pushed to once side and the circuit will be closed for low beams, and when you depress the switch the rocker will move to the right and depress the other side completing the high beam circuit.

I hadn't seen pictures of one of these apart so just sharing what's inside there.

Two quick question I had:

1). Are the red/yellow or red/white wires supposed to be for the high or low beam? I need to figure out which is high/low beam so I can make sure I orient the thing the right way when I put it back together

2). It seems like the high beam switch is only temporary as the switch resets after you let go of it. Is that correct? ie, in a modern car, you can pull for temp high beams, or push for hold high beams. It seems like the 240z is setup so you can pull for temp high beams but there doesn't seem to be a way to keep high beams on?

[SteveJ]

RW - High

RY - Low

The switch is a toggle switch. Every time you pull it back all the way, it toggles between the high and low.

[hotsho111]

Awesome, thanks!

[hotsho111]

Quick followup after putting everything back together: I'm not sure if the spring (on the circuit side) in there is too strong, but with everything assembled I can't get the switch to actually toggle.

I took it apart again and even trying to carefully set the depth to see if I could get it to work properly it seems extremely fiddly. The best I could accomplish pushing the switch and getting it to the other side, but it wouldn't reset (so it effectively acted like a normal switch at that point) Is the tolerance on that normally super tight?

I might try replacing the spring or might just look at replacing the whole thing with a push button switch

[jfa.series1]

Unfortunately for you, the switch will never work correctly as long as the board that the wires are soldered to is broken. Pressure on the diamond-shaped rocker to press against the contacts on the board is always going move the board section out of position. Perhaps you can find a donor turn signal switch with the high/low beam switch intact and swap it out. The beam switch is the same for all S30's. I checked my partZ box, don't have one to offer.

[hotsho111]

Ya, getting a new switch would be easiest, but thankfully the way the board on mine is broken I think it could be repairable. It does hold together, the spring in there currently is just waaaaaay to strong. I'm going to try buying some new springs and see if a softer, shorter spring works a bit better.

If that doesn't work I'll probably temporarily just hardwire low beams up and look at replacing it with a different switch or possibly 3d printing a different solution

[hotsho111]

Been a bit busy but I placed an order for a bunch of springs and went at it:

I'm not sure how this thing is supposed to reliably work in the first place as the return force is so weak, even the shortest, softest spring I got (so it *barely* makes contact with the rocker) can't return the rocker to it's original position.

That said, a few of the springs work well as a bit more of a toggle switch (ie, depress the switch, it stays on one side but doesn't return, but depress it again and it will switch to the other side). That might not be a bad solution so the switch acts more like a high/low toggle and less like a temporary switch.

If someone has a working one I'd be happy to take it off your hands, otherwise I might just try and go with the toggle solution with what I've got.

[Captain Obvious]

I'm a little confused... Isn't the Hi/Lo beam switch SUPPOSED to toggle between the two positions?

I'm thinking if that's what it's doing, that's what you want. What am I missing?

[hotsho111]

Ahh, that's good then haha. I thought it was always a temporary high beam: ie: pull the stalk, get high beam, let it go, and it would return to low, with no way to maintain high beams. A little weird, but that's what I thought it did after misreading something.

[jfa.series1]

14 hours ago, Captain Obvious said:

I'm a little confused... Isn't the Hi/Lo beam switch SUPPOSED to toggle between the two positions?

I'm thinking if that's what it's doing, that's what you want. What am I missing?

Correct, it is a toggle. There is a cam of sorts on the roller pin that flips from one side to the other. This in turn flips the contact rocker from one side to the other. I doubt that changing out the spring is going to have the desired effect since the phenolic board for the wiring is broken and moves every time the cam is flipped..

[hotsho111]

The actual metal toggle bit of that switch actually isn't broken. Just the contact plates are broken. I can glue that together and it works as expected. Whether it will hold long term is another question though.

[Yarb]

Might just search the forum and see if anyone has one that’s complete. Went through the same thing with mine and the pressure just won’t hold. @jfa.series1is the forum expert.