BOSO(ish) GX71 Toyota Cressida

May 24, 2010

A couple of months gone and not much done.

Filed under: Uncategorized —— bosogx71 @ 11:26 am

As the title suggests the Cressy hasn’t changed much from my last post.

I have however fixed a couple of things that were wrong with the car.

When I swapped the quad headlights into the car I just used the standard sealed beams that came with the lights. They were totally pathetic and useless. Squinting was required to drive at night. So the solution, a brand new set of total replacement semi-sealed beams (the glass bit) and new Artic Blue bulbs.

The difference was staggering. Now the reflection off the road signs is almost dazzeling. High beam shines very far into the distance. And driving at night is no longer as scary. So my advice to anyone doing this headlight conversion to their cars. Spend the money and fit the aftermarket semi sealedbeams to your car at the same time.

They don’t come cheap tho. I spent nearly $300 by the time I bought 4 lights, 2 pairs of bulbs (one pair high beam only, the other pair high & low beam) and required roll of wire, heat shrink, etc to make them work. I also took the precaution to wire in 2 relays into the cars headlight wiring so as to not burn out the standard wiring with the extra current draw of the new grunty bulbs.

The 2nd thing I fixed was a bit of a random one.

The tail lights stopped working. The Brake, Hazard, Indicators, High Stop, reverse lights would all work. But when you turned on the headlights there would be no tail lights unless I drove round with my foot on the brake.

I checked all the fuses and every thing seemed ok. I swapped bulbs around with no joy. I even bought a test light and still couldn’t find the source of the problem.

Eventually after many weeks of frustration I stumbled apon a bit of info on the net about Toyota Camry’s and Supra’s having what they call a Lamp Failure Sensor wired into the tail lights.

It’s a box about the size of a pack of cigaretts that has a plug going into one end. On my cressida this was mounted under the driver’s side tail light. Inside it has a small circuit board that measures current and through some white man magic should you have a bulb out it will turn on a light on the dashboard to let you know that you have a lamp out.

The problem is is those little magic boxes are prone to shitting out causing your tail lights to do the weird things I’ve mentioned.

The link to where I found this information is here http://www.supramania.com/forums/showthread.php?82576-DIY-Tail-Lamp-Failure-Sensor-Bypass-GET-YOUR-TAIL-AND-OR-BRAKE-LIGHTS-BACK!

The info on the link applies to a supra and the wiring code colours etc on my Cressida WERE DIFFERENT but it gives you a good starting point.

If this saves someone else the weeks of frustration I had then I’m glad. I’m lucky I could find the problem and rewire the car myself to fix the problem. I hate to think how much it would have cost to get a sparky to fix it at $45 an hour charge out rate???

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