Why Are My Headlights Dim, Even After Replacing Them?

Why are my headlights still dim after I’ve replaced them? Welcome to Mercie J where compassion and craftsmanship come together. I'm Rick Smith.

Well, headlights like many other parts on the car require an electrical loop. So we have a battery and so we have a positive post and a negative post and we have to have a full circle connected. So we have to have a solid connection from the positive. And we also have to have a solid connection from the negative to make anything work properly.

So the bulbs could be dim because we could have a connection problem on the ground side. So we have to do what we call a voltage drop when the bulb is lit up we check, we should have zero volts from the bulb to the battery negative on the ground side.

And then on the other side we could have a problem with the switch. We could have a connection issue. A number of things where we don't have full voltage arriving to the bulb either. So we check for the voltage there.

So the only way to know why your bulb's not working is you first check across the bulb with it lit up with a Volt meter and you should have source voltage, 12 to 14 volts, depending if the car’s running or not. And if you don't, now you have to find out where you lost the voltage that you needed to make it light up properly.

I hope this has been informational to you, until next time, safe travels and blessings to you.

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