Headlight Trouble Shooting

C

clintmo

501 Club
Hey, folks. I’m trying to get my lights working on the ‘55. I repaired some damage to the wiring near the switch and replaced a blown fuse. I now have light! The problem is after a few seconds the spring on the light switch gets so hot that it’s burning what’s left of the cloth covering. I have had aftermarket lights on this tractor for years. One quit working a while back before all the lights went out. That one still doesn’t work. After seeing the smoke, I disconnected that one and turned them on again. All good, no smoke. I tried hooking up a new bulb with an original pancake style housing and got smoke again. What’s happening here?

Thanks!
Clint

IMG_0290.jpeg
 
Alright, I got it sussed out. I think I wasn’t getting the one headlight grounded properly. All lights are working and nothing is trying to catch on fire.

Pretty excited to have original style headlights back on this Cub. The originals were pretty messed up from years of abuse including at least one rollover. The molding rings and rubber gaskets were long gone. I found a pair of lights with matching “patina” to this tractor on Craigslist last year but only got into this project today. Between what was left of the original lights, the ones I bought last year and a pair off of my parts tractor, plus new beams, I put together some headlights that work and look like they belong on this machine. IMG_0294.jpegIMG_0295.jpegIMG_0297.jpeg
 
Farmallsodbuster said:
You should remove those terminals and clean it all real good with a wire brush. You may have resistance issues. Also you can see that one wire is shorted to the other possibly. The heat shrink and possibly the insulation appears broken and it’s rubbing against the screw head.
Click to expand...

I see what you’re talking about there. Noted. I rewired this Cub relatively recently (for a 70yo tractor) and cleaned up all the connections then. Today I loosened and retightened them all. Everything’s working now, but I’d still like to get confirmation on what was causing the overheating on that switch.
 
The coil on the switch is a resistor for dim lights. When the lights are on dim, it will get very hot. This is normal. Possibly you had a poor connection that caused some current to go through the resistor, maybe a specific combination of switch position and a bad connection.
 
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