... it's not a cheap fix if you want to do it right...
Pardon me for being away from the boards so long, I've been super busy with other projects. Just recently started giving ol' reliable commuter Camry some lovin'.
The most recent fix was the headlight switch. About a year ago as I was signaling a right lane change to get around some slug of an SUV that probably has loads more power than my little 2.2 trooper, all my dash lights went out. I thought ... huh... Then I got to work, got out of the car, and noticed my headlights were on, but nothing else. No tail lights, no side markers, no license plate lights ... and I thought "crap."
I sifted through the wiring diagrams, found the power wire for the offending lights, and jumped it to ground. Lights came on, all was happy and sunshine rainbows with gumdrop men dancing under palm trees. I simply left the wire twisted to ground, as when I turned off the ignition and opened the driver's side door my lights would turn off automagically. No drained battery, no tickets from nice police officers who think i'm driving with my lights off.
I did look at replacing the switch, but at $94 new I was not too enthusiastic about the purchase. my twisted wires were working fine.
I could have gone to a junkyard, but I didn't want to tear down my column, put in the switch, and have it go out in the same manner in a few months.
Well, today I bit the bullet and got me a brand spankin' new switch. Yes, $94 worth of switch...
Picture:
Now this is not a DIY walkthrough. I didn't take enough pictures for that. It's more of an overview so if you ever have this problem you know what the fix involves.
Please notice that there are three wires coming from the switch, of three different colors. Very important. They also have the spades that go into a male electrical connector. I knew this when I ordered the part, and didn't think much of it at the time.
Moving on...
I disconnected the battery, pulled the airbag and steering wheel, pretty much expecting a easy, visible and accessible connector to pull wires out of... I was just a tad off..
After about 10 or 15 minutes of going deeper and deeper trying to find the end of the wires, this is what the interior of my car looked like:
Honestly, not that bad... What was a tad frustrating? This is what was sitting on my bench waiting for me to figure out:
Sorry for the crummy cell phone pics, BTW. I was not, as I said before, intending to make a walkthrough.
Anyhoo, that's the clockspring, turn signal/wiper/horn/lights/pretty much everything on the doggone steering wheel harness and junk. Not really a big deal to get it all out of the car, but figuring out the wires was a different story...
I pulled the turn signal stalk/light switch off the rest of that mess, and got the wires in the connector isolated. Pulled out the wires, but not before noting one critical thing... The old switch had three wires: a red, a white, and ... another white. D'oh!
How was I supposed to figure out where the yellow goes? I spent about 10 minutes poring over various wiring diagrams again, before I had the brilliant and rather obvious idea to do a continuity test and figure out which was which on the new switch (that rhymes).
Once I had that, it was a simple matter to figure out where the wires went in the connector. I threw it all back together, closed my eyes and hooked up the battery (still not that comfortable messing with airbags). Turned on the lights and prayed the horn didn't go off instead of the low beams.
All is good, back to the ol' sunshine and gumdrop nonsense. Now I have a working switch. Whoop.
The entire ordeal lasted about an hour start to finish, and I felt stupid afterwards. I got whooped by my own car. But that was just because I didn't know what to expect.
Now hopefully anyone else who is considering this knows what to expect.
Oh, things that helped that some folks might not have lying around:
1. Steering wheel/harmonic balancer puller kit. Not essential but it makes things a bit easier.
2. Very small angled tool similar to a tiny screwdriver to pry up the locking tabs and free the spades in the connector.
3. Finesse. Don't over-torque the little phillips head screws holding the clockspring to the switch assembly. As much as you might want revenge for the work you just had to do, that plastic is pretty brittle... Don't ask me how I know this.
Good luck!
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