headlamps wont raise

[a d price]

Can anybody give a newby guidance at what could cause the headlights not to raise on my 1969 S4 Elan
Thanke very much

[rcraven]

All kinds of things could cause this. The simplest might be a loose vacuum pipe or (as I had once) a perished T piece where the pipes go into the front cross member.

[khamai]

Can anybody give a newby guidance at what could cause the headlights not to raise on my 1969 S4 Elan
Thanke very much

Here's a reference article from the GGLC - http://gglotus.org/ggtech/elan-hdlamp/headlamp.htm

Cheers,
Kiyoshi

[billwill]

In a nutshell, your headlight raising system either is not sucking the air out through the tube into the inlet manifold, or you have extensive leaks in the pipes, control 'switch' or the lifters or the front cross-member of your chassis, which is used as a vacuum reservoir.

Or even, some of your pipes are missing, or gone so soft they have been sucked flat.


This assumes you can swivel the headlights up by hand and hence they are not jammed on their pivots.

[SADLOTUS]

Hi ADPrice, give us a clue what's happening. You pull the knob out and.....
The routing for the sucked air is, and you can disconnect at various points to check vacuum: inlet manifold (forward near the rad, should find a one way valve there) to dash pull knob (two pipes, one in one out) to front crossmember (T piece that sucks air out on it's way to sucking air out of the lefthand (I think) pod), left pod (has two tubes) to right pod (one outlet pipe and end of routing.)
Imagine the inlet manifold sucking all that length and look for leaks and obstructions as above.... assuming of course as Billwill says; it's not a siezed or broken pod. You should be able to lift the pod up with a bit of resistance and feel the rubber membrane.
Er... do they droop on long uphill roads?
Or do what I did and put the whole lot in the bath!

Good luck, keep us up to date
Paul

[oldelanman]

Paul, I think your system is piped wrongly - the crossmember reservoir should be before the dash pull switch in the circuit otherwise it serves no purpose.

[garyeanderson]

Can anybody give a newby guidance at what could cause the headlights not to raise on my 1969 S4 Elan
Thanke very much

I don't have a clue of what is wrong, apparently I am not alone. You have to give to get. Please take a look at the following topic and read up on what the system is and then have a look at your Elan and see if you can get an idea of what it is doing (or in this case not doing). You are there and we are not. The search tools suck on this forum but nearly everything that can go wrong has and it has been discussed many times here. Re-runs are common and what was posted in the past can help just as well as anything posted today in most cases.

elan-f14/vacuum-headlamp-actuators-non-failsafe-t21397.html

Roger have a look at Paul's diagram
elan-f14/headlamp-vacuum-circuit-t21376.html

Gary

[a d price]

Thanks everybody, some investigating to do this weekend

[oldelanman]

Roger have a look at Paul's diagram
elan-f14/headlamp-vacuum-circuit-t21376.html

Yes, Paul's earlier diagram is correct but his description here has it piped differently.

The routing for the sucked air is, and you can disconnect at various points to check vacuum: inlet manifold (forward near the rad, should find a one way valve there) to dash pull knob (two pipes, one in one out) to front crossmember (T piece that sucks air out on it's way to sucking air out of the lefthand (I think) pod), left pod (has two tubes) to right pod (one outlet pipe and end of routing.)

[garyeanderson]

Roger have a look at Paul's diagram
elan-f14/headlamp-vacuum-circuit-t21376.html

Yes, Paul's earlier diagram is correct but his description here has it piped differently.

The routing for the sucked air is, and you can disconnect at various points to check vacuum: inlet manifold (forward near the rad, should find a one way valve there) to dash pull knob (two pipes, one in one out) to front crossmember (T piece that sucks air out on it's way to sucking air out of the lefthand (I think) pod), left pod (has two tubes) to right pod (one outlet pipe and end of routing.)

Memory is a tricky thing, sometimes you remember things that are not correct or just write/say what you are thinking even when you know what you meant to say. The topic linked leads me to believe that Paul has it correct on his car and IF we can find the stuff that we wrote at the time we would get closer to the mark. If I write the same shit over and over I will write it wrong at least some of the time, shit happens - ya know?

Gary

p.s. - finding stuff on this site will get harder and harder as more and more posts get spewed from people that can't help and only use this site as a "joke" site. Words are just words and search engine only search for the same words used in an answer to a question or a joke, they are the same words and the search engine only finds them and spews out a list for us to decipher.

To find things now I need to search though my photos to find the date when I took the photos, then I can search though the topics to locate something that may help.

[nigelrbfurness]

First thing to look at, in my experience, is the left-hand-side lifter where the black plastic pipe is joined to the lifter by a piece of rubber pipe. I've had several cars where the plastic pipe has gradually worked its way out of the rubber pipe and just needs pushing back in, especially if its a sudden failure.

Nigel F.

[SADLOTUS]

DOH! If only I'd looked at my own earlier post I wouldn't be apologising now - sorry, I apologise, it looks like my diagram was correct but my description was not, what a dimwit. Good job I changed them to electric... (there's a diagram on here somewhere) and they're still going strong.

Thanks all for pointing it out and Gary for the benefit of doubt... It was a long day, memory lapse, age, etc etc.

Good luck with the lights and like (I think) I said, keep us up to date.

[ftsoft]

Paul, I think your system is piped wrongly - the crossmember reservoir should be before the dash pull switch in the circuit otherwise it serves no purpose.

The lack of a cross member won't keep the system from functioning though. I took mine out of the system years ago and the lights work fine even under load. The pods go down right away when the engine is shut off of course.

Frank

[billwill]

Paul, I think your system is piped wrongly - the crossmember reservoir should be before the dash pull switch in the circuit otherwise it serves no purpose.

The lack of a cross member won't keep the system from functioning though. I took mine out of the system years ago and the lights work fine even under load. The pods go down right away when the engine is shut off of course.

Frank

>The pods go down right away when the engine is shut off of course.


Sounds like your non-return valve is also missing or not working.

[ftsoft]

<Sounds like your non-return valve is also missing or not working.>

Without the non return valve the system doesn't work at all. I'm pretty sure that my cross member leaks and so I just eliminated it from the system to see what would happen. I was surprised that it worked as well as it does.

Frank