New thread, but in continuation of my last thread with my wiring harness burning. I found the previous owner had rigged the dimmer switch with spliced wires from the main harness. The "C" post on the Autronic eye was taped off and removed, indicating the eye probably failed at some point and no longer works.
I want to fix the previous stuff as I am buying the correct factory harness. Q1: Will the dimmer switch work with the A Eye not working? Seems like it should looking at the wiring diagram, as I can just leave the A Eye off from the headlight switch. Q2: Anyone have a picture of theirs with the wire colors going to the dimmer switch? I found the abandoned wires for the dimmer that are not part of the main harness and they look ok.

 

So installed my new wiring harness today and hooked everything up back to original. The dimmer switch does work with the eye in manual position. Will test auto position on the eye tonight. So the relay is definitively good. The dimmer switch wiring is purple from the eye relay to middle position and then yellow from the eye harness to one side and then tan (which comes from the low beam circuit) on the other side.

 

Wiring colors.

 

Test drive didn't go well. LB starting shutting off when dimmer switch was used, only UB, then everything quit, no UB or LB and buzzing from Eye amplifier. I will have rig something and bypass it all, bummer. I am sure the eye solid state conversion is an arm and a leg.

 

So after reading more tonight, looking thru Cadillac Autronic Eye service manuals which is the same for Olds in 1955, if I disconnect the blue and tan wires going to power amplifier, it will revert to manual operation and the dimmer switch will work and more importantly my headlights should work again.

 

Most find that the eye will react to every reflective sign or barrier reflector and becomes a nuisance. Not many reflectors back in the 50's, they are on everything now. .. Tedd

 

What I can understand from the Wiring Diagram is normally the blue wire is going to the foot dimmer switch and then wires from the dimmer switch to the lights.
If you add the Autronic Eye the blue wire would instead go to the relay and everything inside of the dotted line block would get wired up that way and disregard what it shows as normal for wiring up the headlights.
So you would have Green and Brown coming off one side of the relay for the lights, Blue, Yellow and Purple coming off the other side plus ground. Blue going to the Amplifier, Yellow and Purple to the foot dimmer switch, Brown from the switch to --- so forth and so on.
Disregard if you already know all of this.

 

So my power relay was the culprit after all. The LB post had broken off and was laying in there. I drilled the rivet and put a nut and bolt with red locktite. LB and UB work now with or witbout Eye powered up. I left the blue wire off for now. The vibrator hums too much with the lights on.

You can see the nut and bolt in place of the factory rivet that failed.

I lightly sanded the contacts for the LB. You can see the gap in the normal position. Thats why the UB always works.

 

Chances are if the Autronic Eye has never been rebuilt, it is not going to work. When I had my 54, I had an Autronic Eye on it that had been rebuilt and converted to solid state. As Tedd mentioned, it was a nuisance. I never used it.

 

Glad to see you eliminated one problem. But now I'm confused, if you left the blue wire off the relay what is powering the relay?

 

There are 2 blue wires that go the relay. The one from the main wiring harness powers the relay. The 2nd separate blue wire goes to the eye power amp that I left off, that's one that powers the eye. Look the diagram below. The dashed wire is the blue wire from the main harness.

 

Got it.

 

I’m no mechanic, but I have an interest in these unusual old systems. Fun to see what GM was doing 50-60 years ago that remains relevant. My 2017 Audi has the autronic eye equivalent & I like it, but find myself fighting it for high beams from time to time. Which, interestingly, is just what I found in my ‘66 Starfire…

I added a ‘65-66 vintage Olds Autronic Eye system to my ‘66 Starfire coupe in 1997/1998 - the dash-mount photoelectric eye, special light switch, special foot switch, amplifier and wiring (complete with fuse!). I think I had it working twice or 3 times after installation 25 years ago.

When I used it, I found that the lighting in my old suburban CA neighborhood was enough to keep kicking the lights to low beam with the logic programmed into the system. I played with the Near/Far rheostat on the dash a bit, but it didn’t seem to make much difference. Perhaps the amount of light in 1966 coming at the cars of the day was just lower than the 1990s.

If you’d like to get a working system, perhaps a couple of suggestions might help:

1) I might try adapting a later solid state (probably 1967/1968 and later) to the 50’s sensor & control equipment. Finding working fuses and circuit boards for 50’s-60’s these days would be quite a trial.

2) If your computer-handy (well, o.k., really a geek.) you might be able to adapt a Raspberry Pi (tiny computer) to take the light input from a photocell, take a
sensitivity input from the control rheostat and have the Pi choose high or low beams based on a simple program or table. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone’s done this already.

3) If you’re really into tubes and originality, hunt up the Cadillac vendors and see what you can adapt from contemporary tech from back in your car’s day. That’s fun in & of itself - the hunt, discovery, restoration, addition & use.

I claim no great insight here, just my $.02 (or well these days, probably a dime…)

Chris