Headlight Switch

[aipri]

Hey everyone. So the other day my headlights stopped coming on, parking lights, but no headlights on third switch press. However, the headlights did come on, along with the high beams, when using the stalk. My impression was that it must be an original switch. I ordered a new one from DeloreanGO, installed it, and the headlights still didn't come on. I then hit the stalk again while the switch was fully on, they then came on, and stayed on after releasing the stalk. I tried turning them off and on again and they worked. I then put the old switch back in, and they work with that now too. Sadly this sounds to me like a dreaded short, but wanted to see if anyone else experienced something similar. I'm happy they are working but I'm sure this will happen again and don't want to close everything back up just for it to re-occur. I also noticed, what look like a kind of T tap on the wires to the switch,(pic attached) is that normal?

Additionally, I was sloppy and didn't turn the power off when plugging in the new switch, rookie mistake, I know. When I did this there was a spark and the LED on the DeloreanGo switch stopped working. The light on the OEM switch now doest work either, is this a fuse?

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

IMG_1607.jpg

[Jonathan]

Just a thought on you saying the third switch press. The way my switch works (from off) is one press turns on the running lights, the second press turns on the headlights and the third press turns it back to off. So the third press gets you back to where you were. Yet occasionally if I kind of double-press accidentally, it can get the switch out of sequence and the headlights don’t come on. If I cycle through the presses again it’s fine. Just thought it might be something like that for you and not an actual short.

[Jonathan]

Also, the little bulb in the headlight switch is fused separately from the headlights themselves. That little switch bulb is on fuse 8 while the low beams are fuse 14 and high beams on fuse 15. If you blew fuse 8, you’ll also have lost the passenger side exterior lights as they are on that same circuit.

And no, those little red plastic wire splitter jobbies aren’t standard issue from the factory but plenty of cars have them in various spots.

[David T]

Verify that you have BOTH low beams AND high beams. I have seen cars that had both filaments for the 2 low beams burnt out but you still will see the bulbs light up on high beam. It would seem like the bulbs are not burnt out BUT there are TWO filaments inside the outer bulbs and the low beam filaments are burnt. For low beams both outer bulbs light and for high beams all 4 bulbs light up. You should hear the relay click when you turn on the lights. There is a high beam relay and a low beam relay. Common for the headlight switch to melt inside. When you use the stalk (dip switch) you are turning on only the high beams, NOT low beams. Also common for that tiny bulb to go bad. Same one in the 4 way flasher switch. While you are at this check all of your parking lights. In fact, open up the front left and right markers and make sure there is no corrosion, very common.

[aipri]

You guys rock, thanks! About the number or presses, I meant to say 2 not 3, sorry for the confusion. It definitely looks like I popped fuse 8 because the passenger exterior lights are out as stated. Both relays for the low beams and high beams can be heard. Low beams are working fine currently. I’m wondering if maybe the old switch was just beginning to fail and jostling it loose got it working again. Regardless I’ll use the Delorean Europe/DeloreanGo switch when I reinstall. All of my marker lights I swapped to led a few years ago so they should be good. Just hope it’s not something else that caused the low beams to fail.