Where is the headlight relay in my 68?

grogthegreat · 03-25-2012, 04:24 PM

Hi,
I hooked up power to my 912 for the first time yesterday and got some great smelling smoke to pour out of my headlight switch! So while I'm hunting for a new switch, I want to make sure that everything else is wired correctly and working so that some other undiscovered issue doesn't kill the replacement switch.
With that in mind, I went to test the entire headlight electrical system but ran into a road block when I couldn't find the silly headlight relay. The electrical diagram shows that my car should have one. The wires I have on the back of my dead headlight switch and on the fuse panel both match the electrical diagram.
The previous owner had swapped in h5 headlights which I like the look of but I suspect he might have wired something wrong. I already found that he had eliminated the horn relay and wired a push button on the dash to be the horn. Most the electrical system is complete and original but old and tired.

Thanks in advance!

Jaems Thomsen · 03-26-2012, 09:07 AM

You didn't say what year is the car. That always help when asking questions.

There was not a headlamp relay for the 65-68 model cars. There was one for the headlight flasher #43 and one for the hazard flasher #46 on your wiring diagram. Some folks over the years have installed them when adding stronger headlamps.

grogthegreat · 03-26-2012, 11:59 AM

Thanks for the info. The car year is in the thread title but next time I'll add it to the actual post as well.
If my car doesn't have a relay than I will add one as I don't want to put all that current through such an old switch. Plus I might decide to add fog lights latter on. I might need to add two relays actually, one for the low beams and one for the high beams.

djdsc · 07:47 AM

There is a high beam relay under the driver peddle board. Much of the power for the car is routed through the headlight switch so a lot can be going on.

There is a lot of info on the 912bbs.org

Photo SV

Jaems Thomsen · 03-27-2012, 08:42 AM

The high beam relay listed above is the headlamp flasher relay. You will need another relay between the fuse block and the headlamps.

grogthegreat · 03-28-2012, 12:21 PM

I found that high beam relay you have in the pic. Looking closer at the wiring diagram, it seems you guys are right: that relay switches between high/low beams but all the power still goes through the switches.
Looks like I'll pickup two small relays (one for low beam and one for high beam) and as you said, install them between the fuse block and the headlights.