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testing 1966 headlight doors

Charger guy

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Hi I'm new here and I am lookin for information for testing 1966 charger headlight doors. An answer here or a point to a place where this has already been covered would be great !! My doors both stopped working at the same time in the shut position. Am I able to manually open the doors ?? Also looking for dash light testing info---heard it will " light me up "" if not careful !!
 
Hi I'm new here and I am lookin for information for testing 1966 charger headlight doors. An answer here or a point to a place where this has already been covered would be great !! My doors both stopped working at the same time in the shut position. Am I able to manually open the doors ?? Also looking for dash light testing info---heard it will " light me up "" if not careful !!

welcome
 
Welcome Charger guy!

Head lamps and dash lights on the 66-67 Chargers are rather complicated but there are places around the net to find some good info.
You should stop over at 66-67charger.com There is a resource guide there that is very helpful with trouble shooting the headlamps. Also guys there that rebuild motors, have new limit switches and relays to keep your lights rotating.
With the dash lights you can find good info and guy who are rebuilding power packs and restoring/rebuilding the gauges.

You can not rotate the headlamp buckets manually. Did they just stop working at the same time? There are a few things to check.
1. There is a big electrical connector up in front of the battery. It should have a rubber grommet that runs through the radiator support. Take that a part and make sure all connections are clean and not corroded. All the connections for the headlamps must be clean, any voltage drop in the system and the lights wont work right.
In the same area there should be a black wire with a white stripe that is screwed to the rad support, that is a ground, clean that good.
2. Unhook the connectors at the motors. There are 3 wires, one opens the lamps, one closes and the other is a ground. Hot wire the motors to see if they rotate. If they do that's a good deal!
3. At each motor there are 2 micro switches or limit switches. Unhook them and see if there is continuity in those. You can use a long screw driver through the grille to work the switch.
4. there is a circuit breaker located behind the left kick panel. Make sure there is juice there.
5. The "HOLD OPEN" toggle switch on the left of the steering wheel. On mine if you ran the switch back and for and the lamps would rotate. That switch can be taken out of the dash, taken a part and clean up the contacts.
6. Behind the glove box there are 3 relays, control, open and closing. Can you hear any thing "clicking" when the light switch is turned on or when the HOLD OPEN switch is switched?
I could keep going but those are some of the highlights to check.

Dash lights will "bite" your not careful. A transformer under the dash takes 12V up to 220 to run the dash lights. More than likely that power pack needs to be rebuilt.

Like I said, go to 66-67charger.com and check out the source guide. My dash lights or headlamps didn't work, I fumbled through it, asked lots of questions and got everything working.

http://http://www.chargersourceguide.com/
 
Thanks for the info..gonna start on it today. Yes, they stopped working at the same time, so I am thinking the motors are ok, and I am getting no clicking noises from in the dash.
 
update

Spent the afternoon and no progress.....tried to hot wire the motors ( at the motors ) and got no response. Tried additional grounding. Tried to hot wire the system in a couple different places and no response. I can say that I am getting power at the center " control relay ", when you turn headlights on ( but no click ).. I did try switching the open and close relays ( as they are identical ) and got a click out of one of them, but no response with the doors. My headlights are coming on, and the warning light lights up too.
 
There is a manual way to rotate the buckets to the open position. Look for the slotted screw that holds the motor rotating bracket to the bucket. You can slip a screwdriver in between the grill openings and turn that CCW and it will allow you to rotate the entire bucket assembly by hand to the open position. Then retighten the screw. Dodge put that there as a failsafe in case the motor(s) failed. It is in the owners manual.

If the motors wont operate by hot wiring them, you need to talk to Topher, the headlight motorman listed above. I rebuild/restore the EL gauges and power packs, feel free to contact me to troubleshoot your EL issues, www.thegaugedoc.com. My phone number is listed there.


Mark
 
I just got mine working a couple weeks ago. The source of all my problems was the connector by the front of the car, i replaced it with a different connector that had the same design and the headlights started working faster and the loghts were even a little brighter.
 
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