What is up with my light controls? Could someone explain how the headlight controls (the stalk on the left of the steering column, and the button on the floor to the left of the clutch) are supposed to work? The stalk has three positions, and can be pulled towards the driver. It also has a knob handle that can be rotated.) i can't really sort it out -- sometimes they seem to do one thing, then the other. The floor switch seems to turn on the brights indicator on the speedo, but doesn't actually do anything to the lights!!
On our Euro car (which might have no relevance), one rotates the knob on the end of the stalk counterclockwise to turn on the lights. After that, the position of the stalk determines the lighting. All the way up: parking lights. Middle: high beams (& blue speedo indicator). Down: low beams. Pulling the stalk toward the driver flashes the lights. Not an ergonomic masterpiece. It's easy to bump the stalk with one's knee when releasing the clutch, thereby triggering the high beams. Also, until one gets used to the set-up, it's all too easy to select parking lights by accident, which can be pretty exciting at night. No floor button on our car. A floor button on a car with a clutch doesn't make a lot of sense, but then...
Could be the floor button can over-ride the brights when they are on -- so it's really a brights "off" switch so you don't have to take a hand off the wheel coming into a turn when a car appears in the opposite direction?? I'll have to try it tomorrow! Thanx...
Don't believe the floor button is stock. My '72 GT works just like all the Euros as detailed above. No GTS I have seen has the floor button. Maybe a GTS owner will chime in. If button is not stock, no one knows what you have until you make sense of it. Let us know what you find. John
I concur- the '73 USA-version GTS I owned for 17 years worked just as described above, and had no floor button.
I've hit the headlight switch way too many times and have often wondered how difficult it would be to flip the switch. Since I never run with the parking lights on, it makes sense to have them on when the stalk is down. Anyone know what's involved in "flipping" the switch? And I have no floor switch in my GTS.
