So buoyed by my discussions at the beginning of the year with one of the members here (michaeloberg1980) and his success with getting his fog lights working, I decided to tackle my fog light issues. Today I went about seeing if I could get them fixed. First I took a piece of 16 gauge wire and soldered a 20 gauge repair fusible link section to it...
I attached the looped end of the fusible link to the hot terminal on the starter relay and ran the wire into the passenger compartment. After getting it inside, I checked the wire and found that I was getting 12v at the end of the wire. Yeah! I disconnected the connector from the relay and found that there was no power at the end of the factory power wire coming into the relay, so I figured I was on the right track. I crimped on a female connector to the end of my replacement wire and installed that into the relay connector where the original wire had been. I replaced the connector onto the relay and gave it a go. No fog lights. I replaced the aftermarket relay with a factory relay that I had, and still no fog lights. I disconnected the 2 pin connector from the back of the fog light switch and inserted a jumper wire into the female ends of the connector, still no fog lights...but the fog light power light came on (for the first time), so again, figured I might be on the right track. I disconnected the passenger side fog light from it's connector and checked for power at the connector. I did have 12v at the connector. So why didn't I have power at the light? I cut two short sections of wire and ran it straight from the battery into the connector on the fog light. Viola...power! I cleaned up the pins on the connector, applied a bit of dielectric grease, reconnected, and for the first time in 13 years, had a working fog light.
The second fog light was not as simple. That one would not come on using the power straight from the battery. Turns out it had a bad bulb holder. Luckily I had a replacement fog light in my parts stockpile in the basement and was able to confirm that it worked. I installed it and now had two working fog lights. Woohoo!
I also had a spare fog light switch. I installed the two pin connector onto the back of tho spare switch, but couldn't get the fog lights to come on with that switch either.
So...that brings me to a question... I know it's possible, however unlikely, to have two bad fog light switches. Since I was able to jumper the connector and get power, I'm assuming that the switches must be bad, since all they do is complete a connection. When I checked the second fog light switch for continuity, I wasn't able to come up with anything, either with the switch on or off. I was only checking continuity between the two pins at the back of the switch. I saw the two leads that go to the power illumination bulb, but I'm thinking that, based on the wiring diagrams that I have and the fact that the power light came on when I jumped the pins, they appear to be on a separate circuit?
Am I checking the fog light switch correctly?
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