Headlight connectors

Hi all. I'm replacing the headlights on my Defender. The 3 pin male connectors that go on the back of the bulb have burnt away and disintegrated as I pulled them off. I have been surprised by a difficulty in obtaining replacements, does anybody know where I can get them from in the UK? Halfrauds had nothing, and Maplin's neither. Even the 'never-let-me-down' CPC didn't have them!

Cheers,

Dave.

Reply to
Dave Gibbs
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Oops, I of course meant female connectors, not male. At 36 you'd think I'd know the difference between men and women by now :-)

Dave.

Reply to
Dave Gibbs

Have you got the sex right? Male bits on all the bulbs that I've seen.

The female bits are available. Try auto-electricians and the old Lucas agents.

Gordon Equipments (Durite) do one with crimp connectors, Bosch and/or Hella did them with screw connectors.

Reply to
Dougal

Did mine with replacements from the autoelectricians ( Kingtown Estate Carlisle) very cheap to buy at about a quid each did yours look like

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Reply to
Derek

|| Dave Gibbs wrote: || ||| ||| Hi all. I'm replacing the headlights on my Defender. The 3 pin ||| male connectors that go on the back of the bulb have burnt away and ||| disintegrated as I pulled them off. I have been surprised by a ||| difficulty in obtaining replacements, does anybody know where I can ||| get them from in the UK? Halfrauds had nothing, and Maplin's ||| neither. Even the 'never-let-me-down' CPC didn't have them! ||| ||| Cheers, ||| ||| Dave. || || Have you got the sex right? Male bits on all the bulbs that I've || seen. || || The female bits are available. Try auto-electricians and the old || Lucas agents. || || Gordon Equipments (Durite) do one with crimp connectors, Bosch and/or || Hella did them with screw connectors.

Vehicle Wiring Products? Seem to have most things in that line.

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Brilliant online catalogue. Wasted many an hour there when I should have been working.

Reply to
Richard Brookman

Good thinking! They're there:

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Reply to
Dougal

Any Lucas Service centre should have them, there's one at Trafford Park in Manchester, but in case they haven't (which is unlikely) you can use small spade connectors if you open them up sideways with a flat bladed screwdriver and wire them separately as a temporary fix.

Martin.

Reply to
Oily

Well that's is how I read it but ended up wondering what the problem was just buy some new bulbs...

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Mine were much worse than that, I'm surprised I'd not had any small fires from it. The connector just fell to bits and the spades were black as can be. I should have photo'd them before I chucked them. I haven't delved deeper (yet) but I suspect that the spotlights that I removed from the bull bar were wired in the same circuit. Result of a previous owners wiring 'skills' which I'm slowly sorting out.

Regards,

Dave.

Reply to
Dave Gibbs

Thanks for all the excellent and quick responses guys, really appreciated. Finally I can get her peepers back together. Every time I look at her on the drive it looks like someone's come along and poked her eyes out!

Reply to
Dave Gibbs

The lighting connectors are away from harm in the cold its when the wiring blocks under the dash start smoking that its time to reach for the dry powder. I know I bang on about it but some of the connectors are so badly made that they must have used out workers at a zoo to make them

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Derek 'Do you know the piano's on my foot?'

Reply to
Derek

On or around Mon, 11 Sep 2006 22:30:12 +0100, Dave Gibbs enlightened us thusly:

I bet someone fitted over-wattage bulbs at some point.

I've seen various melted and burnt things in vehicle headlamp circuits, and mostly it was down to overloading the system. The headlamp circuits are designed to take 60W per lamp and 120W total. Run 200 W or 260W though it and you're overloading it getting on for 100%, hardly surprising that this causes trouble.

modern motors seem even more prone to this, with minimum-spec wiring and so forth. the older ones at least had decently-fat wires. Older light switches seem more robust too.

The moral is, if you're uprating, even just fitting a pair of 55W spots, put relays in.

Is it CANBUS that runs a fat power circuit around the vehicle and switches everything locally? Makes sense, if you're doing a rewire - you can do it electromechanically, too - doesn't have to be electronic.

Run a nice fat cable all round the vehicle like a ring main, and take suitable-sized tappings off it for relays to power up lights and suchlike wherever you need 'em, preferably without actually breaking the main power line - I'd do it by stripping the insulation and soldering, making sure that the joints are then properly insulated and more to the point, secured against vibration. the various extant circuits which currently power up the lights, etc., can then be used to trigger local relays. Put the relays in sensible places where they can be got at and use fused relays (or possibly fuses in the relevant tappings)

lessee, you'd want 4 relays for indicators, 2 for rear lights, 1 or 2 for brake lights, 2 for side lights... they're all fairly low current, so a 10A relay would do each. Then you want one for yer horn, one each for the 4 headlamp filaments, plus one for spots and one for fogs, if fitted. Spots needn't have individual relays, you could run 4x55W or 2x100W from a single

30A relay. The headlamp ones have one each for redundancy, in the same way that there are 4 supply wires on modern vehicles to the headlamps, and 4 fuses.
Reply to
Austin Shackles

(snip)

Not necessarily - the LH headlight socket on my 110 (which has never had higher than standard bulbs) failed - and the rather dubious looking replacement did a few months later - this second failure was clearly due to a high resistance connection between the earth spade and the wire. The second replacement I shopped round until I found a better looking replacement. Another problem was the fumes from original one overheating ruined the reflector on the light. JD

Reply to
JD

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