New member in Vancouver

[Vanbot]

Hi,

I've had my lovely van for two years now with all sorts of joys and dilemmas. Sorry, no pictures for now, don't have any on my work computer.

One of my favourite things about my van is being able to toss three mountain bikes in the back without having to take any of their wheels off (cause I've got the back bench out and in storage and a tarp down over the carpet) and comfortably get me and my friends there and back again.

I'd like to toss up a few questions and perhaps someone here can steer me to the most appropriate place to post them, as I'm not only new to this forum, but to forums in general:

Only one of my headlights works at a time. One burns out, I change it, a week later, the other one burns out.

Does anybody know if you can plug in a polar pad (peel and stick oil pan heater) to a portable power pack and if so, what minimum amps should the pack have?

Thanks in advance and hello!

Vanbot

[loki]

the light burning out I would check the condition of the plugs make sure they are making solid contact and there is no corrosion, also you might want to consider running heaver gauge wire from the battery (with a fuse on :)) and use a relay activated by the stock wire, this can help provide cleaner power, several people have indicated that the stock wires to the head lights are too small a gauge and so any corrosion or loose connection can cause problems, these bulbs don't like to run well or for long with out enough power.

I would also recommend that you put in your profile your location as many questions answers will be different in different locations.

[Vanbot]

Thank you for the advice.

How hard of a job would that be? I'm not very experienced working on cars but I did manage to figure out how to change the headlight. I'm certainly willing to try and I have access to a decent array of tools. But I do admit, I don't understand half of what you wrote. A friend of mine suggesting cleaning the battery contacts, but it's a new battery and there's been weird electrical stuff going on since day one.

I'm in Vancouver. I've updated that, thanks for pointing it out.

[loki]

Thank you for the advice.

How hard of a job would that be? I'm not very experienced working on cars but I did manage to figure out how to change the headlight. I'm certainly willing to try and I have access to a decent array of tools. But I do admit, I don't understand half of what you wrote. A friend of mine suggesting cleaning the battery contacts, but it's a new battery and there's been weird electrical stuff going on since day one.

I'm in Vancouver. I've updated that, thanks for pointing it out.

if the battery was replaced the terminals could still be corroded, cleaning them is always a good idea. as for how hard the wiring is, it shouldn't be too terrible, I going to try to get around to doing it myself this weekend, I would say that I'll take pictures but I never end up remebering or wanting to touch the camera with my greasy hands

what you do is hook up a wire, and fuse, to the positive terminal of the battery run it to the headlights in the best way you can, hook it up to an automotive relay. the relay will have a power in, power out and switch power. the power in is from the battery, the power out goes to the light, the switched power comes from the existing wire that you disconnected from the light. I hope that makes sense and that someone better at this will correct me if I misspoke/typed

[Vanbot]

Cool. That sounds like something I could tackle. Sure beats trying to look all nonchalant to avoid a burnt out headlight ticket all the time.

[BCDelica]

Cheers,

Following the same advice for a repeat burnt headlight; after changing some wires, soldering some connections, and cleaning existing connectors but it turned out the cause was the daytime running light module. This happened twice with that Delica requiring two DRL module changes until I just wired in the simple relay type DRL's, that worked fine in our other Delica. This did occur in a pre 90 style Delica with the square headlights, which also suffers from light gauge wiring and corrosion behind the lamps. Just a thought to check your DRL set up.