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Originally Posted by John Firestone  Is there no panel west of the steering wheel and south of the left side air vent? What is filling what? Could you post a picture? |
The rheostat/headlight is to the left of the steering wheel between the air vent and the steering wheel. I have tried blasting the F out of it with electrical contact cleaner but not getting any dice after multiple applications, but I do still have a full can. It is zero residue cleaner, not WD40 or something, specialized for electrical applications.
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Originally Posted by John Firestone Just the opposite: the engineers, to translate a German expression, "cooked with water" and used an old-fashioned rheostat. Rheostats are less expensive than modern solid state controls (or were?), but are difficult to impossible to protect against shorts. That is more cooking with water. Would you prefer to replace multiple rheostats?  |
Lol. Cooked with water is probably exactly what happened; even though it blew no fuses. It was tremendously rainy those days, and my stupid staff trashed the plastic I specifically told them to recover the window with when the car was parked while they were working. I can only imagine how much rain was blowing into the damn window.
Honestly, if I could do it cost efficiently, I'd prefer no rheostats at all. Rheostat impedance controls are notorious for getting dirty, scratchy, failing, in everything from home audio to... well... apparently cars. If I want the "dimmer" (ie. instrumentation lights on) then they may as well be full blast. It is highly doubtful that the push/pull (which is working) for the headlights are on a rheostat, the headlights are either on or off.
IMO if I can just get it to work at a reasonable price I will do so. If I am to rip off the whole damned dash I'm thinking may as well go all the way and replace them with automotive toggles, unless there is an easier way to simply replace the dimmer/headlight unit.
It also has a classic well documented problem, the left running light is out, which also has a high correlation with a bad dimmer. Why on earth they would even have the running lights on any circuit associated with the dimmer/headlight switch I can't imagine. Maybe because it's a 99. In Canada all running lights are regulated by law at some year to always be on when the vehicle is running.