What's up everyone? Welcome back to The Durbin Compound! If you haven't met me already, my name
is Devin Durbin. So today I was thinking about a little shorter video. We're going to get down
into dirty, or down and dirty, with some of the...I don't know why I had to think about that.
Bless my heart. We're going to get down and dirty into some electronic stuff. So, one of the things that
is my forte, or my trade, is electronics and electrical stuff. So, I don't usually share
it very often because most of the time it's too complex for people to learn in just one project.
So it's something that takes practice. Something that we can understand the, you know,
the rudiment and really down in the basics. But as far as advanced electronics and electronics theory,
it's way over a lot of people's heads. So those of you watching the channel can probably
agree that it's kind of hard to teach somebody unless you have something directly in front of you.
One of the things that happened to me over the weekend is, the Land Rover headlight went out.
So the Land Rover goes through headlights from time to time. And so, they take these H7 bulbs
in them and they're not cheap. I think there're $25 to...They're anywhere from $17 to $25 a piece.
If you get the SilverStar Ultras like I do, they're like $60 for two bulbs. So, maybe
they're more like $50 for two bulbs. But nonetheless, you spend $25 on a bulb, you want
to make sure that that is exactly what's wrong. And you're not replacing it for no reason. So one
of the things that commonly happens is the bulb might go out. And it might not
light up, but when you take it out of the truck it looks like it is intact. So if you look really
closely at the filament in it, it still looks like a good bulb. So if anybody knows how to look at a bulb,
basically you're looking at the little spiral filament inside the bulb. Now that spiral filament
is basically just a tightly wound little piece of wire that creates resistance in the line.
So resistance is basically everything that you think a resistance is. Somebody pushing back on you.
So if you were trying to pull--like pulling a rope like tug-of-war, the other person is giving
you resistance. It's making it harder for you to get done what needs done. So as the voltage goes
through the wire, and it adds that resistance, what it does is it builds up that energy. And that's
what makes the light. That's what makes that glow. So after a while, or it getting jostled around, you know,
they go out. But if you look at, if you're looking at the filament in this bulb that I took out,
it doesn't look broken. It looks intact. It looks 100%. It looks a little worn,
like it's been, you know, in a couple years of use. But otherwise looks intact. So today I'm
going to show you exactly how to shoot it with a basic multimeter, and explain to you exactly what
you're looking for, and why it's important. So then, if you take out the bulb and it looks fine,
you can shoot it with the meter and tell if it's bad because if you were to put these in a lineup
of bulbs next to me, I'd say this one's good, just by experience and looking at the light bulb.
It looks like it's intact, 100%, that's good. Let's put it in the truck. Oh! All of a sudden it
doesn't work. So now you're fighting the fuses. We'll even probably go over to the truck
and shoot the voltage at the actual connector. And I'll show you how to do that as well. So I'll
quit bumping my gums. Let's bring the camera in close and let's show you exactly how to
shoot these headlights, or headlight bulbs, and show you exactly what you're looking for.
Okay, hopefully my voice isn't booming into this microphone since it's right here by my face.
But first things first, you don't have to have a nice multimeter to be able to do something like this.
You can have a very cheap one that is $4 or $5. You can do this with just about
anything. The concept is still the same. You just need to know your tolerances. If you're working
with very, very precise electronics, then you need a nicer meter because that tolerance isn't there.
But something like shooting a light bulb, you literally just need to figure out if there is a loop,
basically created inside the light bulb. There is a loop in between both of these terminals and it
goes through that filament. So there might be a little bit of resistance. But there should not be much.
So what we're going to do is, we've already set our R-Meter to ohms. And we put it at 200.
That's the lowest range when it comes to ohms. Now the first thing you want to do is, make sure that you
have a decent battery in here. Sometimes people are getting erroneous readings and they're
like what is going on with my meter? Well, the battery's low. So it's not doing its job. So make
sure you have a clean battery. And then you need to test your baseline first. So your baseline,
for some reason on these Fluke leads, I get about 2.5 to 3 ohms on these leads. So I touched them
together, make sure that, okay, I'm going to base it on 2.8. So 2.8 is my baseline.
Or we'll consider that 0. Okay, so out here on these pieces of safety wire, we're
at...Let's see where we're at here. Okay, about the same thing 2.8. So, right about the
same darn thing. So now let's shoot our light bulb and make sure. Let's see if it's truly blown or
it's good to go. So this is my light bulb. The reason why I twist safety wire around
my leads is so that I can do work just like this. And I can touch it on each side. So as you can see,
touch it on each side, and we are getting an open signal. Means there is no loop here. So we know that
that bulb looks good, but it is bad. Now let's go over to the regular light bulb, the new one and
we're going to go ahead and shoot this bad boy. And what are we at here? So we'll let it settle.
Okay, we're at about 1 ohm. So not bad. So I saw 3.8 just like that. So that's 1 ohm from
our baseline. This is a good bulb. This is a bad bulb. We have now determined that there is no loop here.
Another thing that you can use is this audible signal. So when you touch it together it will beep.
Okay? You can use this as well. When you come on here--no beep. Okay, when you come on here, it beeps.
So there are two different ways of shooting it. But there you have it. You have tested
the ohms. We're going to make sure this bulb is bad and this bulb is good. You do not have to have
an awesome multimeter. You just need to make sure that there's a loop. And boom! Just like that! Too easy!
That is exactly how that's done. So we've proved that the bulb looks good, but it is crap. So we're
going to go ahead and pitch it. And we're going to put our new bulb in the truck. So now let's roll over
to the truck.This will make the video a little bit longer, but I want to explain exactly how to
shoot the connector at the truck, to see exactly, you know, if it's good or bad at the truck.
So we can check fuses and stuff like that. But we won't go into that today. We're just going to go into how to
shoot the connector and make sure it's good.
All right, now we're down here on the headlight assembly itself.
So what I want to do is pull my connector off the back of the bulb here.
Be careful that you don't over-stress it. You don't want to pull the wires out of the actual connector.
So now that I've got my connector freed up, literally all we're going to do is we're going to
shove one wire in here. Actually it's big enough that I can put just my lead in here, to shove my
lead in the connector. So there's two sides to the connector here. Of course,
you do not want anything touching one another. So there's two sides of the connector. Looks like
I am going to go with safety wire. So depending on your voltage, which we're looking at 12 volts DC.
So 12 volts DC on my meter. I wanted to set it at 20 volts DC. So you want to go as
close as you can, over--but not too far over. So if I were to put 200, obviously it's going to move the
decimal point over one more hundred. And then it's going to look a little bit different on the screen.
So what I want to do is, I'm looking for 12 volts DC. So it really doesn't matter which way
you put your leads on this connector. There are two wires. One is a common, or one's a ground, and
one's the power. So if you put it on backwards, it's literally just going to put a minus there
because it's reversed polarity. It doesn't matter. It's not going to affect the meter. So I have it on
20 volts DC. Now I have it on my connector to my headlight. So, if I found that the bulb was
good, but it's still out, this is me testing the exact connector here, to see if it's a fuse in
the truck, or maybe a headlight switch, or something like that. Something you can easily troubleshoot on
your own. So I have everything clear. They're not touching one another. I'm not going to disturb it.
I'm going to go into the cabin, turn the lights on and we should see 12 volts DC on my meter.
And boom! 11.71 Okay, so that's right around what we want. So now you notice it says negative on
there, means I reversed the polarity. So if I want to fool around with this real quick and make sure I
do not touch anything while it's on, now I've reversed the terminals. And now it says positive
11.7. So that's a very easy, down and dirty way to measure this to make sure that your connector or
truck side is good. So if we shot the bulb and it shoots good and this connector also shoots
good, more than likely it's your bulb that's bad because, you know, it might be just degraded to
the point where it doesn't light up, but you can't see that degradation on your meter.
It's not that accurate. So that is a simple, down and dirty explanation of exactly how I would test a headlight.
All right guys, well I hope you liked my video on troubleshooting simple stuff when
it comes to headlights and headlight bulbs. If you like my content, go ahead and hit subscribe.
I'd really appreciate the help out here. I need all the help I can get. So, as always, thanks for
watching if you stuck in for the whole thing. Stay tuned for more. And we'll see you guys next video.