Well, that was an annoyingly medium-sized crisis tonight. Drove out of the carpark, got nearly all the way to Lauren’s house, and realised that my headlights weren’t working. The dash lights worked fine, the parkers worked fine (‘cept for the one with the busted bulb) but no headlights. Odd!
So, as I was leaving Lauren’s I decided that I would like to keep my license, and that having no headlights probably wouldn’t help that cause. So it was out with the multimeter, checked the fuses, checked the wiring, all the usual gubbins. One of the fuses had blown, but replacing that didn’t resolve the issue. I checked that the lights were still fine, no blown globes - something that would suck royally, since they are sealed beams and sort of expensive. Basically, no voltage was getting to the lights themselves. Poo!
So, it was out with the bottom half of the dash, and more playing. I pulled the connector off the switch that turns the lights on, and played a bit - blew a fuse because I shorted something I probably shouldn’t have, then played around a bit more. I could get the parkers to turn on, but not the headlights - so it wasn’t the switch that was busted. Looking around a bit more, I realised that when I was mucking around with the indicator stalk today (since I’d snapped it, and the araldite didn’t hold, I had to ghetto it up… stupid plastic crap!) I’d unplugged its connector, and not plugged it in right, so it’d fallen out again.
Since that connector also has the feed for the high-beams, it seems that disconnecting it had actually stopped any power from getting to the headlights. Plugging it made everything work. Hooray! Medium-sized crisis over, legal driving ability returns!
So the moral of the story is: Remember to check EVERYTHING works after you do work on a car, especially under the dashboard.