2001 Oldsmobile Bravada - Bulb whack-a-mole game

The right low beam bulb worked. The left side low beam did not work. The high beams worked. Both bulbs were replaced. Both the low beam and high beam worked. After driving about 30 minutes in the highway at night (70 miles per hour) the low beam went out and it would not come on. ( The car has auto light but did not work). I manually turned the lights on and did not come on. Drove home with the fog lights. When we got home and parked the car, after a few minutes the lights came on. I turned the car off and then turned the car on and the lights came on automatically. Have not driven the car at night again but concerned that it will happened again. The car has 115k miles Any suggestions?

May or may not help: remove the bulbs, thoroughly spray the sockets with plastic compatible electrical cleaner such as CRC QD spray. Then reinstall bulbs.

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After bulb cleaner, find the ground wire screws remove them, clean the corrosion off all parts and reinstall.

What often happens on this model is that the interior relay box . . . which contains the headlamp ground relay . . . gets extremely brittle and corroded contacts for the portion that controls the headlamp ground

I want to be clear that this interior relay box ONLY contains relays. It is NOT the fuse box on the left side of the dash. This relay box is tucked up to the left of the steering wheel and only visible when you stick your head up under the dash. It needs to be removed to see the damaged wires.

The wire will be overheated and loose

Good luck :smiley:

Good ideas above. If I had that problem myself I’d definitely do the bulb socket cleaning and improve the ground connection at the bulb fixture proactively, possibly all that’s needed. While the symptom does sort of sound like a relay or corroded wiring connector is involved, I wouldn’t rush to buy replacement relays/wiring harnesses unless further testing revealed them to be the actual cause. The best solution, possibly the only long-term solution, is for an auto-electric technician or someone w/similar experience to use a DVM to trace the headlight electrical power from the battery to the light bulb at a time the problem is occurring. Generally more time-efficient to trace in the reverse direction, from bulb towards battery.

We’ll try spreading the prongs a little bit to make better contact. I was replacing the right side every year and just adjusted the prongs a little and it’s been almost two years with no problem. I even bought a new socket to wire in the next time went out, but still on the shelf. I a,ways replaced left and right at the same time with silver stars so it was about $50 a pop.

Thank you everyone for the reply and will look into it

George, the ground connection is NOT at the bulb

Please read my earlier post

There’s not a lot of testing involved

You get the wiring diagram and your multimeter

you quickly figure out where you have power and where you don’t

Then you drop that relay box, as described

And you’ll quickly see the damaged wiring and terminals

We had tons of S10s, Sonomas, Blazers and Jimmys in our fleet and most of them eventually had this exact problem

Bravada is just the Oldsmobile version of the Jimmy and Blazer

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A bulb with no ground connection? Really?

I have to admit I was trying to picture in my mind how this could be but I’m not a mechanic or engineer. Maybe meant the ground wire terminates someplace else.

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Well guys tomorrow I was planning to relook at it (day off from work) and this week we did drive the car once during the day local - and the car sat in the garage for 3 days. And now the car wont start. It tries but it dies. I had it jump start and ad it tuned on. I drove it around the block a few times. I then parked the car inside the garage and the same happened. it wont start. I tried it and heard click and now nothing. only starts now with a jump start. Could the new bulb lights have anything to do with it? Or just bad luck?

Ask your shop for a parasitic current draw test. There may be bulb turned on or even a short circuit that’s draining the battery. Anything much over 75 mA indicates a problem remains.

I wonder if you fried your battery. A click is normal for a low battery.

can “autozone” do parasitic current draw test? or is that always from a mechanic?

How could I have fried the battery? Even when I took the car out on Tuesday, no issues.

I guess AZ could perform such a test, but imo you’d serve your own interest better to ask a pro mechanic do it for you. I personally wouldn’t allow any parts store staff to do anything on my vehicles beyond perhaps changing the windshield wipers. If you need a less expensive option, google that term, maybe you’ll decide you can do it yourself.

So if I test it myself with a voltmeter and the readings are 75 mA, then what?

Start with recharging and testing the battery.

Technically yes, but NOOOOOO!!!
AutoZone sells parts and is in NO way a service provider… They, like many chain parts houses, do very, very basic battery installs and can screw that up, and wiper blades… And pull codes only… They do not do diagnostics either…

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There is no direct wire from the bulb to a ground

the headlamp ground relay provides the ground

here’s the path

It goes from the bulb to the multifunction switch, and then to the headlamp ground relay

My colleague just had a 2003 GMC Sonoma with no headlamps

I told him where to look . . .

Sure enough, there was that exact same crispy wire and terminal at the headlamp ground relay, in that interior relay box