Bothe of my head lamps do not have a 3 prong connector going to them, and my after market dimmer switch with a little different connector locations and no 3 prong makes me believe my wiring installation could be wrong. I have been running it this way for a while but have been smelling some wiring a heating up as I am on my way to work in the morning. I know where the power is on the dimmer switch, now you have a high and low beam terminal, how do you determine that, and the head lamp ground terminal is the middle one I believe, now how do you determine the high and low beam to the headlamps? Thank you there Bolters...᠁.
Be sure to tell us what model '55 you have. I am not familiar with Task Force trucks and might make a difference, although I doubt it. Regarding the 3 prong connector for the headlight harness, one of them is a ground. The ground will connect at the inner fender panel (at least on Advance Design trucks) and does NOT go to the dimmer switch.
The dimmer switch has 3 connections; one for the battery hot wire, one for low beam and one for high beam. Functionally, it doesn't really matter which headlight connection you hook to, except that you may not be synchronized with the high beam indicator bulb on your instrument cluster. If it is wrong, (you have a 50% chance randomly doing it right!) just switch them.
If you have no dedicated ground connection on your headlights, perhaps the headlights are seeking a ground, heating something up explaining the smell you detect.
You should use: 1. Three prong headlight bulb connectors. 2. Three prong headlight bulbs.
Looking at the standard bulb from the rear with middle prong at top; left is ground, top is Lo beam and right is Hi beam. Wire both high beams to either dimmer switch terminal and both Lo beams to the other. (You said you know which is hot on that switch). As Kent said, it makes no difference which one you choose to be Hi and Lo. It is just a switch that routes hot to one, then the other, as you depress. Dash indicator per Kent also.
The hot to the dimmer comes from the headlight switch.
The grounds go to nearby, good bare-metal surface with tight bolt.
"Bothe of my head lamps do not have a 3 prong connector going to them" So how exactly are they wired?
I read a post from you about dimmer wiring, and such, over a year ago. Do you not have functional headlights now? Is there some problem? Give us some insight as to your question?
Now it looks like my to head lamps are wired with the a ground (Black) wire, looking from the rear at the very top, your telling me the top should be the low beam. The head lights work pretty good, not the best, cops have gone by with no 180 on me so? See I have had some wire connectors actually have melted right onto the terminal. so maybe I'll try and run the Black wire over to the left side and take it from there. You guys have really given me some good info I can try. Thanks again....
Be sure to give us an update on your progress. There's a wealth of information on this site and genuine Stovebolters that are more than willing to lend a hand!
