Blowing Headlight Bulbs

[Ray Heverin]

My 1993 2.0 ie Dedra is continually blowing the right hand dip beam bulb. The voltage at the grey wire leading into the bulb is 17.5v with no load and 16.7v with load. Is this the problem? The plastic housing for the electrical connection around the grey wire is partly melted/burned. The bulbs are standard wattage, not high powered.

Thanks in advance.

Ray Heverin.

[Ray Heverin]

I've solved the problem (hopefully). The connector to the headlight bulb may have been intermittent and therefore caused some arcing and probably the early demise of a seriese of bulbs.

The problem with the voltage was (and this is embarrassing) a flat battery on my new digital multimeter! Thanks to Dave Nolan for pointing this out. Once replaced the DMM read 14.42V across the battery while the car was running.