Headlamp Dimmer?!

[minigts]

I'm trying to do some wiring on an older truck using a switch from one of our cars. There are a couple of wires I don't recognize and certainly don't understand. The first is a headlamp relay and the other is a headlamp dimmer. Now they may both do the same thing in essence, but would the dimmer act like a relay and simply limit the amount of current that is sent to the headlight?

BTW, I'm using two different diagram books, one from 85 because it's the same unit and one from 93 which has ONE wire that isn't shown in the 85 or 89 manuals. The 93 book has the wiring going to a relay and the 85 book has it simply going to the high/low switch. I can grasp the high low deal, but a relay? And this is just one wire, not two, coming off the switch. The lights hit the 40 way and then break out to two wires, one for each headlight.

[marc]

Is the wire you talking about pink w/lite green trace? I think that wire goes to a relay that kills the fog lights when the hi beams are on. Lite green is common from the headlight switch to the dimmer switch. Violet from the dimmer goes to low beams and red/orange to the high. What year, make, model is the truck you are working on?

[marc]

The pink w/lite green trace is power to the dimmer switch when the headlights are off to flash the high beams to pass. Its not needed unless you want to flash some slow poke in front of you.

[minigts]

OH!!! Cool deal. Thanks for the heads up on what it does! So the other wire that I mentioned was a headlight dimmer just means it's for the high and low, correct?

[marc]

I'm not 100% clear on what you're asking. Basically, the light green wire from the dimmer switch goes to the headlight switch. It's hot all the time when the headlight switch is pulled out. The red wire and the violet wire goes to the head lamps. Only one of these should be hot at any one time. The light green wire with the black trace or the (85 book) or the pink with light green later does the same thing (supplies power for the flashing of the high beams for passing.)

[minigts]

I'm not 100% clear on what you're asking. Basically, the light green wire from the dimmer switch goes to the headlight switch. It's hot all the time when the headlight switch is pulled out. The red wire and the violet wire goes to the head lamps. Only one of these should be hot at any one time. The light green wire with the black trace or the (85 book) or the pink with light green later does the same thing (supplies power for the flashing of the high beams for passing.)

Yeah that was it. I decided to use my brain and check the page that is referred to. It refers to three different pages, all for the different L-M,Z setups. Now I have to wire this into a GM truck harness.