480 electrical gremlins

[Roy Hedger]

New 480 turbo owner here with some initial electrical faults to rectify.

Drivers side headlight is a bit temperamental, sometimes it pops up, sometimes not. It always goes down. If it doesn't pop up and I move it slightly by hand it goes up under it's own steam.

Lights do not flash when headlights down. On my old 480 the long range lamps would flash if the headlights are down.

Any help with above greatly appreciated.

R

[Clan]

Originally Posted by Roy Hedger

New 480 turbo owner here with some initial electrical faults to rectify.

Drivers side headlight is a bit temperamental, sometimes it pops up, sometimes not. It always goes down. If it doesn't pop up and I move it slightly by hand it goes up under it's own steam.

Lights do not flash when headlights down. On my old 480 the long range lamps would flash if the headlights are down.

Any help with above greatly appreciated.

R

yes the long range should flash when the headlamps are down...

I would take the R/H motor apart and clean and grease it.

[Roy Hedger]

Thanks Clan.

[Ulrikas PA]

If you go on YouTube at the moment, someone has posted the BBC Motor show programme from 1987 and they did a featurette on the 480, including its sophisticated electronics

That made me chuckle after owning 3 of them.

[Roy Hedger]

Hi Ulrikas PA, do you have a link for the video please? I'd like to watch that but can't find it.

[Ulrikas PA]

Originally Posted by Roy Hedger

Hi Ulrikas PA, do you have a link for the video please? I'd like to watch that but can't find it.

Sorry, I meant 86 ! Near the beginning, after the Hyundai Stellar !


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AaYq7n...hvdyA4Nw%3D%3D

[Roy Hedger]

Haha. Brilliant.
Thanks.

R

[MGB204]

Not sure if you fixed it or not, but one thing that many owners neglected was to replace the little gas struts that help to lift the lights. When these go bad, the motor has to work harder than it was designed too, which can cause the motor itself to fail. Might explain why it has problems going up but not down.

The official servicing recommends replacing them every 40k miles, however back when I had my 480 phase, hardly anyone seemed aware of the need to replace them.

[Roy Hedger]

Hi MGB204.
That is exactly the problem.
I bought some new struts from SGS Engineering and fitted them but they made no difference.
I them saw a post somewhere about the struts needed to push from the start of their travel with no dead spot. The sgs ones have a dead spot at the start of their travel. I ordered some better ones from Volvo fan in Poland and they seem to have fixed the problem 🤞

[Roy Hedger]

Oh, and the flashing headlights was traced to a bad indicator stalk. I managed to get one from Dave Walker and all is well now.