Headlight dim
 

2002 Boxster s. Last fall I felt my headlights seemed too dim. I replaced both bulbs with the H-7 as I recall. The brights work fine but the passenger side on normal is very dim. You can see the difference when you pull in the garage. Last night I left my daughter place and she texted me your passenger light is really dim. So it must be quite noticable . Any wisdom on this.

Check the headlight grounds. The wiring on these headlights is marginal at best.

How yellowed are your headlights? That can cause them to look pretty dim also.

+1. The insulation on the wiring inside the headlight assemblies just falls apart with age. You may have an (almost) short inside the assembly. Pull out the assembly and take a close look inside. Liquid electrical tape works pretty good to re-insulate the wires if you don't feel like pulling it all apart.

Thanks guys, I will pull it back out and have a closer look. Its not a yellowing situation. I live in West Mi we rarely see the sun. Its always stored inside. I did start it up and backed it out and took a look from 50 ft or so away. Its night and day difference from side to side. I've always switched on the fog lights. I'm sure they don't have the downrange effect. The brights really light things up but I don't want to be that guy.

When I replaced my headlights recently I was surprised to find that several of the wires inside the harness were cracked and had exposed copper. These were inside the headlight housing so not exposed to the elements. And the bulbs I replaced looked ancient, so I may be the first person to have opened them since they left Stuttgart 21 years ago.

I wonder if it's the heat from the bulbs? I doubt it though since there aren't any cracks in the engine bay wiring. I don't think I've ever seen wiring insulation that isn't super high voltage and constantly exposed to the elements (like electric fence runners) crack their insulation like that.

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I have seen the same thing on several of these cars. It's a heat & age plus too thin of a wire/insulation.

My opinion is that they used too thin of a wire with too thin of insulation. Add heat & cold cycles to that and the wires were going to crack eventually, just a matter of time. I am more surprised when I open one up to replace either bulb to NOT find any wires cracked then I am to see them cracked.

When you add the internal wiring with the wrong sized wires to the rest of the headlight wiring and then put 20 years on the car and it's going to be an issue. On 944's what we used to do is just run each headlight off a relay & a new 12v wire to the fuse panel or battery and instantly saw a change. Basically used the original wiring for turning the relay on/off. Porsche isn't the only mfg to encounter this, virtually every mfg has or will have this issue. Also see this a lot on Jeeps.

Now that the new headlight standards have been approved I think this may become a non issue on new cars & LED's but we are stuck with what we have. Best thing to do is clean your grounds and fix any wiring issues you encounter.

Found a couple of pics from back in the day of my passenger headlight. Weird thing is, the drivers side was fine.
http://986forum.com/forums/uploads02...1651722921.jpg
http://986forum.com/forums/uploads02...1651722994.jpg