Basic Electrical? - 94 Merc Tracer Headlights

I am basically aware of electrical things in homes, but not so great
with cars yet.

The headlights stopped working. High beams work in the "pull/temporary"
mode, but pushing the stalk for high-beams "on" mode does nothing.
Setting headlight switch to turn on headlights also does nothing.

The headlight fuse in the engine compartment is good, but when I remove
the fuse and measure across the posts, I get nothing, but when I take
the COM lead on the meter to the battery neg, I show 12 volts. 1 or 2
other eng compartment fuse locations test similarly. 1 tests fine.

I have located the headlight relay under the dash and that's now easily
accessible for any testing required.

So, what can I test to troubleshoot the problem?

(The car had just been to have a smog check before I noticed this, in
case this is important. I'm not aware of anything they'd touch that
might effect this, but you never know. I cannot say that the headlights
were working fine before as my son had the car.)


--
Joe

Sounds like your switch that you pull for high beams might be bad
though I'm not sure. Whenever I work on electrical circuits I always
like to have a circuit diagram. I don't test for voltage across fuses
just from ground for com to the 2 exposed metal of the new type fuses.
make sure you get 12 volts with the fuse plugged in. And I like to
test at relay sockets by jumping from power to the load to see if it
comes on. Sometimes the terminals are numbered, try jumping 30
(battery power) to 87(load) or try 87a (alt load)