Hello all,
I have an 01 Forester L that I bought a couple of weeks ago. It has been great so far, and I recently took it on a 1000 mile trip where it performed fine. But I have a strange problem that started happening in the last couple of days.
Turning on the high beams instantly blows the LH headlight fuse (a 15A fuse found in the underhood fuse box). After the fuse blows, both the high and low beams on the left (driver's) side are significantly dimmer than they should be. Replacing the fuse is easy and fixes the brightness problem - at least until I have to go to my high beams again. I've replaced the fuse three times in the last couple of days. Oddly enough, this didn't happen at all on my trip last weekend (I repeatedly switched between high and low on the highway with no problems at all).
I'm thinking that perhaps there is a short that is causing too much current draw when high beams are on, but have no idea where to look or how to start chasing it down (no wiring diagrams on hand). Does anyone have any suggestions?
One thing that may or may not be related: my outside temp. gauge doesn't usually give a reading (just "---"); however, I noticed today that after the fuse blew, I started getting a reading, although an incorrect one (it was registering as 113F, when it was only about 83F outside, and the reading didn't seem to change at all - perhaps getting max signal to the sensor?). I don't know if this sensor is on the same circuit as the headlamps or has anything to do with my above problem - I just thought that I'd mention it in case it is, since my other car (a Saturn) frequently has unrelated items together on one fuse.
I'd really appreciate any insights/advice from Forester and/or electrical gurus on this group. I don't have an owner's manual (didn't come with one), and unfortunately Haynes hasn't made a Forester tear-down book yet.
Thanks very much, Mike snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com