Hella Lights stopped working...troubleshooting??

So I've had my Hella Black Magic 500's installed for about 2 months now and they've been working fine until this morning. My interior LED switch is illuminated, so I'm getting power to the switch and out to the Relay (I'm assuming).

So I'm guessing I should check the following:

1. Power - Fuse from battery to relay?
2. Relay itself - I don't have a volt meter, but I do have one of those household outlet testers with the two prongs and a little LED light on the end to test for power - would that work or would it be easier to simply replace the relay if fuse above is good?
3. All of the inline wire splices were done with heat shrink connectors and then wrapped with heat shrink tubing...and then all encased in that black plastic split tubing - so I'm hoping this isn't a connection issue as I don't want to undo all of that to test.

 

multimeter to the rescue...probably a connection went bad...

 

Thanks....can you please elaborate a wee bit? Is that a tool I test each connection with?

 

Had a few minutes at lunch..... the fuse from battery to relay is good & and all wire connectors & ground connections seem intact....guess I'll replace the relay and go from there. The only other issue could be the only inline wire splices/connections about a foot behind the lights....but like I said, I used heat shrink connectors and then heat shrink tubing, wrapped in electrical tape and then covered with the plastic split tubing all the way back to the relay. Left a little slack to account for wind, snow, etc. as well. Gosh I hope it's the relay.

 

Probably not it but did you check the bulbs

 

Also check the back of your switch and make sure all the wires are still connected. One of mine had wiggled off and I thought my light bar had died

 

Not yet.....I think the 500's are sealed anyway and figured both wouldn't go at the same time.

 

Just did that as well.....add a fuse fuses are good too.

 

Check the bulb, 500's are not sealed, you can pull the back black plastic piece off (screw at the bottom) and then the bulb unclips from the metal/glass reflector bowl. That's how we convert to HID

 

If you have a multimeter ready, you can use it to see if the relay is in fact bad or not. Disconnect the lights, then use one lead on the wire that went to the lights, then the other lead to your ground point, and see if you're reading 12V when the switch is hot.

 

Relays are easy to troubleshoot, put your ear next to the relay, have someone hit the switch, if you hear a click from the relay, you're good! No sound equals bad relay

 

I don't own one....would a place like Advanced Auto have one I could use in the parking lot?

I looked into buying one, but the price ranges are huge and I'd only really need it this one time.

 

^why didn't I think of the listening idea... Hahaha.

 

Also depends how you wired your hellas. Did you wire through ignition or just straight off of the battery?

 

Will do....thanks!

 

As far getting a multimeter, I think Advance or something might let you borrow one. However, I would say it's a good thing to invest in even a cheap one. Harbor Freight sometimes has coupons for free meters.

 

You can probably borrow one from Autozone, they have loaners for everything

 

Wired from the Acc fuse slot (using add a fuse) in the dash to a switch...then switch to relay. Power from battery to relay.

 

Well, if you don't see/smell any burnt wiring, everything is pointing to either a bad relay or a bad bulb. If you're still seeing a light at the switch then your AAF is fine.

Looking right at your light, there should be screw at the bottom, unscrew that and the glass will fall out, you can pull the wire through the rear rubber grommet a little to pull the glass out more and disconnect wires from the bulb and then unclip the bulb and look at it and see if the filament is still intact or not.

 

Hmmm...I don't recall seeing any screws on the back of the housing. I'll double check.