'57 headlight/high-beam indicator question..

[Russell Ashley]

Originally Posted by mr48chev

I'd have to believe his problem is at the headlight end Russel. It seems that he has an indicator light that works fine but is getting feed back through the system.

As I wrote previously I'd have to believe that he isn't getting a good ground at the headlights.

Possibly due to :

Ground wire not hooked up at all.

ground wire securely fastened to a screw in sheet metal but the paint on the sheet metal is acting as an insulator. This I have seen dozens of times on friends freshly painted vehicles over the past 50 years and quite often on the ground strap to the engine block.

Sheet metal too rusted where one piece connects to the other to make good grounding contact between the nose and the cab. This is a possibility on some of the rigs that have "great undisturbed patina" Rust is rust and rust is a real poor electrical connector.
The same concept would apply to a rig that had been completely taken apart, sandblasted and each panel primed and painted with several coats of paint separately so that the paint didn't allow much electrical connection between the panels back to the cab.

If you have a couple of alligator clips and a length of wire you might make up a jumper that you can ground the lights back to the battery with and make sure everything works like it should than start the step by step process of finding out where the real problem is.

I don't disagree with your diagnosis. Since he's in the process of a rewiring job I just wanted to point out that the instrument cluster needs to be grounded. I added a black wire ground to mine when I was installing my EZWire harness.