maccave

Had this 97 for about a month now. flat out loving it but it does have a few issues I'm trying take care of such as skid plate needs replaced, sun visors are warped inside the cloth, and just some TLC.

First off, let me say that all of the lights on the vehicle work as they should.
(except for the fog lights but I know why they don't work. Their wiring plug doesn't match the wiring harness on the car so my dealer is thinking my car may have a different nose from the original. I might try just splicing the wires from the fog lights to the harness and see if that works)

But back to my main question.
My question is why would someone run 2 wires from the left headlight to the right one? One blue wire and one gray wire.



[I]this image is looking towards the front of the car. You can see the blue and gray wires. On the left side there is a wad of black tape. I remove this and the wiring in there is soldered

My dealer suggested maybe the headlight light module went bad and this was somebody's cheap way of by-passing the module. This sound right?
They of course quoted me a price of $600.00 for a new module and install.

I have since found modules online for a lot less and would replace it myself if you guys think this is the reason for the "extra" wiring.

I'm trying to get the car back to original and this wiring is definitely not original!

Just let me say this. I'm 59 years old and have wanted a Corvette since I was 13 years old when the 1968's came out. I finally got me this one and I am having a ball learning about it and bringing it back.

One cool thing I found out this morning.
Bloomington Gold is moving their annual event to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in June 2015!
And I live in Indpls!
Woo Hoo!
Anyway I'm happy and consider myself very lucky to have finally joined the Corvette crowd.

thank you so much for any help.

dadaroo

I'll try and assist. The HL module is very critical since it controls the motors and not the actual lights. The module has one input requesting the HL doors to open or close. It has two outputs, one for each headlight motor. It also monitors current and shuts off the motor when it hits the stops and current goes up. There are no limit switches.

Not sure if someone is trying to run both motors from one output of the module. Not sure if the module would even do it but we can check into that.

What we need to do is to compare your wiring to OEM and find out where theses wires start and terminate. These are from 2001 FSM but they should be the same for your car also.

Left Connector (driver):
Dark Green Motor Down
Light Green Motor Up
Yellow Low Beam
Dark Green/White High Beam
Black Ground

Right Connector (passenger):

Dark Blue Motor Down
Light Blue Motor Up
Tan/White Low Beam
Light Green/Black High Beam
Black Ground


If you need to discuss this in further detail you can PM me and we can talk on the phone. Once we resolve this we can move to the fog lights.

maccave

wow thanks for the quick reply!

looking at my wiring and the info you gave me, it looks like they have indeed spliced into the wiring for the motor.
On the passenger side, the gray wire is tapped into the "light blue motor up" and the blue wire is tapped into the "dark blue motor down" wires.

On the drivers side its gets a little fuzzy.
The blue/gray wires are spliced into a cluster of wires that are taped up.
from there, there is a green wire and a looks like a white wire and these 2 go up under the headlight itself.
left side


right side

dadaroo

A little hard to tell without being there but it sure seems like he jury rigged the motor module to both motors. If you are saying you have wire colors different from what I posted we can see if the wire colors match up with a 97 FSM. I used a 2001 but these colors should not have changed between the years. I think you need to undo his tapping and let's look closer at what he tapped into.

If we confirm that is all he did, then:

The module is on the passenger side under the headlight door. Most people access it by jacking the car up (use jack stands for safety). There is an access panel under there which is easy to remove.

If it were me I would put in a new module and remove the previous jury rig wiring. May need to tape up where the connections were tied in. If you need to unsolder a connection and you have never done soldering just look up a YouTube video or PM me and I will walk you thru what to get and how to do it. $20 at Radio Shack and you will have what you need.

maccave

I'll go out and double check the wiring tomorrow.
And un-tape the wiring to see whats going on there.
(I'm kind of limited on my mobility right now, I just had foot surgery and its a little hard to get around)
Looking at the pictures of the driver's side, I'm thinking the white wires that come out of the wad of tape is probably the power leads?
I agree with you though, once I knew which wire was for what it sure looks like they were re-routing the headlight module.

I'm fine with soldering and have my soldering iron ready to go once I make the decision to replace the module.

Again, thank you so much for your help.

Bill

dadaroo

Take your time, not planning on going anywhere.

maccave

me again. I was finally able to hobble out to the garage to double check the wiring.

from what i can tell, I need to take off the black tape, de-solder the wiring, remove the blue and gray wire completely then re-solder the remaining wires to each other and retape.

Then hook up my replacement headlight module and I should be good.
sound right to you?

I wish I could find a picture of what this area looks like stock.

thanks again for your help on this.

dadaroo

I want you to undo the tape and then I want to verify where the wires are actually tied in. If they are tied in to the motor circuits only I want to verify that first.

I do believe we can get you back to stock very easily.

I can take pictures of my car if needed.

maccave

if you have time. I've tried finding some online and it seems people take a picture of just about everything except their headlight plugs!

let me know if I need to remove more of the tape or whatever...

thanks!

maccave

studying this image, I think this is what I need to do...

disconnect the battery.

then on the driver's side...
un-tape where the blue-green-white wire are joined.
de-solder them, take the blue wire out completely, then re-solder the green and white wire back together. Cover with tape.

then do the same on the other cluster.
un-tape the gray-gray-white wires, remove the gray one completely, the re-solder the original gray wire back to the white one. Cover with tape.

then on the passenger side, disconnect the blue and gray wires from the connector, re-tape what needs to be re-taped.

Then, replace the headlight module, double check everything, reconnect the battery and try it out.

I figure if for some reason it doesn't work I can always put it back the way it was, right?

If it does work, then I'm off to fix my fog lights!

dadaroo

Sounds good. A quick shortcut would be to just cut the Blue and Gray wire and put in a new module. If that makes everything work correctly then you can take your time.

maccave

Just waiting on the module.
I found a used one online for $50 with a 90 day money back warranty.
Hopefully will have it by this weekend and I can try this out.