One headlight not working

[copper]

The drivers side headlight (D2S)is not working. Thought it was the bulb. Bought a new bulb stuck it in and notta. So I figured I could have gotten a bad bulb. Took the bulb out of the passenger side (which worked) placed it on the drivers side notta. Took the old bulb and placed it on the passenger side and it worked. What can cause this problem? Please help.

Its a 2002 996

Thanks

Copper

[copper]

I called the dealership where I bought the little lady. Last Thursday!!! Yes, I am a new proud owner of a 2002 966 which will be my DD. It only had 15,000 miles on it and I had to jump on her. I forgot that they had a buyer from Canada that had a down payment and that the dealership had to do some driving light changes due to the laws of Canada. He backed out because of taxes bringing it across the boarder. So I am bringing it back to them tomorrow to see if they did the wiring job wrong when they converted it back to US standards.

Thanks

Looking forward to learning and being part of the community.

John AKA Copper

[tilley]

I had the same problem. Do both tail lights work? Turned out i had a faulty relay which just happened to be the one people splice a wire near for a poor mans drl mod.

[solent]

I had one turn signal bulb not working on a 996.2 (2002). Removed the light assembly - took out and tested the bulb - it was good. I replaced the relay (since it is cheap and easy) - but that was not the problem (relay flashed double speed on side with lamp out, but normal on other side). So I removed the light assembly again, cleaned the bulb socket with flux cleaner, put in a new bulb anyway, and tested the resistance from the connector on the assembly (pin 4 is 12V to the turn signal on mine and pin 7 or 8 was ground) - I found a connector diagram on-line. I guess you could do the same with the headlight circuit - test resistance with a multimeter and that should proove that the problem is not in the lamp assembly / socket itself. I then cleaned the electrical connector inside the front fender with flux cleaner spray - (it looked clean - no corrosion) - and put the whole light assembly back in the guide rails - carefully followed the owners manual on how to lock the assembly back into place (it almost sounds like something is breaking when you do that - seems like poor design) - and now everything works. Not really sure what was wrong. Maybe something just rattled loose in driving. I saw a couple of other threads with light problems that were fixed by carefully cleaning and reseating the light assembly - especially in older cars, Of course if someone just messed with the wiring - a loose fuse or something like that is the other place to look. I had my stereo replaced when I purchased my car - drove home and the next day the car would not start. The shop had told me they had to replace the fuse for the BOSE amp - and since they didn't know which it was had removed and replaced a lot of fuses. I guess one was not seated well - and rattled loose in driving. That controlled the DME - and when I took it out and seated it back in the fuse box again - car started first time !

Good luck ....

-MB