Hey, im totally new here, but i thought i would share this with you as it is probably useful.
Its been bugging me for a while that 6v beetle lights relays seem to sometimes just DIE. They still click, because the coil is massivly over engineered and will last pretty much indefinetly, as are most of the metal parts involved, but for some reason they just dont conduct.
Also occasionally they overheat, which carbonizes the paxolin base plate, which a) makes it conductive and b) makes it fall appart. But its allways the middle connector, which overheats.
This happened to my lights relay in the 66, and me being me, i decided to get to the bottom of it. 6v lights relays arnt getting any more common, and the new(est) ones avalible now as new are apparintly of questionable quality, and plus with any old vehicles conservation is an important aspect. So i set about reverse engineering some dead examples, and i figured it out. I dont think anyone has noticed this problem yet.
Attached is a diagram of the relay, i dont know the genuine names for these parts so i called them stuff.
The 'flipper' has a tiny little copper rivet, maybe 2mm long and 0.5mm in diameter. This tiny parts, labelled mushroom on the diagram, carries the entire current to the headlamps!
But, it seems the copper rivet is only pressed into the brass 'flipper'. So the copper rivet can oxidize, and build up a layer of insulating copper oxide between it and the brass.
My solution...just solder inside the flipper arm loop, so the back of the copper rivet/mushroom is soldered to the brass. You cannot solder the bottom, since thats a moving contact, and solder will tarnish and mess it up, but you can solder from the inside of the tube shaped flipper arm bottom. Now the rivet is in permenant electrical contact with the brass, and since its a soldered joint it will not oxadize.
Im running 60W halogen bulbs through the system and the relay is showing absolutely no sings of distress, even tho these bulbs usually have a habit of frying the stock VW relay. And the relay is completely cold, another improvement over the usual state of them.
And all these problems because of about 100th of a gram of copper oxide, and a part thats barely visible to the naked eye!
Of course, you could just say ''buy a new relay'' and proclaim this all a waste of time, but...i dunno...i got bored. lightsrelay.jpg You have insufficient rights to see the content.