Headlight and Parking Lights not working

[Ken Stacer]

Our headlights and Parking lights and not working.  I checked the bulbs and they all seem to be OK.  The turn signals all work OK.
Could you please provide some expertise on this problem?

Our coach is a 2008 Beaver Contessa.

Thank you

Ken & Lois Stacer

[Stan Simpson]

I'd start in the electrical bay. On our coach, it's the bay in front of the road side front tire. Most coaches have a schematic of the re-settable relays pasted to the door on the inside. There should also be a picture of it in your owner's manual.

Find the ones that say, headlights and parking lights and check it. New relays can be purchased at any auto parts store, and are not expensive.

That is the breadth of my expertise. Others know way more and will probably chime in.

[Joel Ashley]

I believe the parking and the headlamps are on separate relays and circuit breakers, although I don't see an original headlamp relay - only the ones added later during our headlight modification.  It’s unlikely that’s where the problem is if both fail at once.  I’d be suspicious of the common entity first, the light switch, especially since I’ve had trouble with mine in the past.

You might check that there is 12v at the headlight and the parking lamp circuit breakers in the chassis DC electric bay (street side front).  Your coach may be different, but on our Monterey those are respectively breakers #8 and #7;  the parking relay is top left in the relay group on the left side of the white panel.  Hopefully there is still a legend sheet glued to the inside of your bay door.  It should also ID the relays upper left of the bay.  Otherwise you may have to just go by the IDs stamped on the white wires.  Check that the nuts are snug on the breakers.

Also check the nuts on the left Terminal Buss (the two vertical, non-breakered busses TB1 & TB2) on the right side of the white panel.  On mine, the top one is Parking Lts, the 4th one down is Low Beams and the 5th is Hi Beams.

But for the reason I gave I’d see that the dash light switch looks okay in the back and works as intended, which may require removal from the dash and checking with a meter.  Not only can switches be bad to start with, but some owners try to fix their poor headlight operation by installing high-amp lamps, resulting in switch meltdown.  Been there.

Joel