I bought an 01 SE AE in October. Shortly after it's purchase I installed HID's for the headlights only. Everything was fine and good until my PS fog light went out. I changed the bulb but it didn't work. A few days later, it was on. The next day it was off, then on again, proving to be an intermittent problem. Now it's just always off. Here's where it gets tricky. At the connector for said fog light, I am getting a solid 12v (13.2 when the car is running) with the bulb unplugged. As soon as the bulb is plugged in, the voltage plummets to zero. I'm short on time today, but I'm going to try a quick little rewire tomorrow and see what happens. Has anyone else run into this. Do you think the HID's have an influence? By the way, the high beams are not plugged in because I can't stand the indicator being on at all times. I feel that fact is unimportant though considering the fogs have been operable with it this way.

Any help is greatly appreciated, and I'm sorry I wrote a book.

J

 

when you checked the voltage in the light bulb socket, I am assuming you had the headlight and fog light switches on, otherwise you shouldn't have 12 volts there.

That kind of reaction is when the wire with 12 volts is not able to supply electrical current. That could be a corroded connection.

What you can do is remove the fog light relay (FR FOG LAMP by the power steering oil reservoir) and jumper pins 3 and 5. There are only 4 pins and they are arranged like a plus sign. Pins 3 and 5 are across from each other, fender to fender.

When you put the jumper in, the lights should light up. It does not matter what position the light switches are in. If the lights do not light up, check (preferably replace) 15 amp fuse # 6 (top row 6th from the left) and try again. If still no lights, you have a wiring problem.

The way the electricity flows is: battery to fuse #6, to pin 3 of the relay, to pin 5 of the relay, to the fog lights, to ground.

See page 69 of the FSM - http://boredmder.com/FSMs/Nissan/Maxima/2001/EL.pdf

 

Definitely bad wire. Upon further inspection I saw a previous owner had spliced a wire from the driver side 12v to the passenger side. I believe there to be a bad connection within that. I got that stupid thing disconnected and tomorrow I'm going to rip into the harness and just rewire it from the relay. (It worked when I did a "bench test" from that location. Thanks a bunch for the advice and even more for the schematics, they've proven to be most valuable.

I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow.

J

 

SUCCESS!!!

Thanks again Dennis. I appreciate a post that states something more than "Check the fuses".


http://carphotos2.cardomain.com/imag..._large.jpg?v=1

 

Great! I love happy endings.