headlamps wont raise

[Elan45]

I must be missing something. I would have thought a '69 S4 would have been a fail-safe car and the headamps should default to raised position. I've not seen any diagram of the newby's system or photos of what it looks like, so all the speculation of problems and solutions is a bit pre-mature, don't you think.

Roger

[billwill]

I must be missing something. I would have thought a '69 S4 would have been a fail-safe car and the headamps should default to raised position. I've not seen any diagram of the newby's system or photos of what it looks like, so all the speculation of problems and solutions is a bit pre-mature, don't you think.

Roger

I'm not sure but I think the later UK cars still had the non-fail-safe pull-up configuration, The USA cars had the pull down system.

[nigelrbfurness]

As far as I'm aware, only Federal cars had the failsafe system. I've had a number of S4s throught my hands over the years and none of them had the failsafe system. I've not had a post-71 Sprint though, so can't speak for those.

Nigel F

[Elan45]

Bill, Nigel and others,

I learned something this morning. I just looked in the parts book and you are correct. Fail safe operation was only used on S4 Federal cars. So this then becomes another issue of we don't know where the requester is located.

Roger

[rcraven]

we don't know where the requester is located.

Wherever he's located there's a fair chance that his system has been altered from its original state by some previous owner. Deliberately disabling a fail-safe system is not unknown.

[billwill]

Bill, Nigel and others,

I learned something this morning. I just looked in the parts book and you are correct. Fail safe operation was only used on S4 Federal cars. So this then becomes another issue of we don't know where the requester is located.

Roger

He said his headlights won't RAISE, so it is highly likely that he has the non-fail-safe system, otherwise the question would be "why don't my headlights retract" or something similar.

[garyeanderson]

Headlamps wont rise- Eureka
posting.php?mode=quote&f=14&p=178904

I recently asked about non rising headlamps. I managed to find that the One way valve on the inlet manifold was stuck so thanks everybody for their advice. Like most cars the Elan does not like being stuck in the garage under a dust sheet, it likes being used . There is a moral there somewhere!

The conclusion to the problem

Gary