Boykid88

A few weeks ago I got the "lamp out" indication on the dash. I changed the drivers side lamp but it would not light the new lamp either. It was out of town, late at night, and pouring rain so I decided to rely on my driving lights and high beams to get me home and I would work on it in my shop later.

Half an hour down the road I realized that the indicator was out and the light was working again. I'm thinking bad or loose connection now. I had actually forgotten about it until yesterday when the "lamp out" indicator came back on again.

I'm going to go through the harness tonight if I get a chance, I just thought I'd ask if anyone else had had a similar issue?

Previously I did a repair to my buddies sunfire that had bad solder joints in the harness for the high beams. It was all over the internet though as a known issue and I was able to find it right away. I got no hits on this one.

wreedCTD

my buddy had the same problem and it was corroded connections.

Boykid88

Could you get any details on where the connections are located? I had to completely dismantle the front end on my buddies sunfire to find them. If I didn't have the map I would have given up way sooner.

wreedCTD

it was the rear passenger socket that the light bulbs pop in to. he replaced it all from oreilly for like 10 bucks.

Boykid88

Your talking a slightly different area but yeah, I already changed out both rear socket assemblies when I replaced the taillights for that same reason.
$24 a piece from dodge but it had to happen.

Now, anybody with any experience on the headlights?

Boykid88

Checked into it further last night. Lamp is good, socket is good, wiring is good. I have no power out of the Front Control Module (FCM) attached to the fuse panel.

Just got off the phone with a buddy down at the dealer and found out that it is common enough that the connection fails where the module plugs into the fuse base. I found lots of water intrusion on the plugs under the fuse panel so I wil be using plenty of dielectric grease on re-assembly.

Interesting enough their parts finder has a few statistics that I found interesting, mostly that they even tracked these numbers.
They sold 8 last year, 2 this year so far and and here's the kicker; the average weekly demand in North America is for 1546 units! Cool Huh? I'm gonna ask that question more often.

I always ask "how common is this problem" so I can hopefully build a case for a recall. I love it when a dealer says "it's not a problem", but then you find out that they sold 80,392 of them last year alone...I think there's a problem.

Anyway, with those numbers I'm sure there will be more members experiencing this problem so I will post my findings and resolution.

The new unit is $262 cdn and the fuse block itself is under $15.

rip 112

I had a problem similar to this but it turned out to be the whole switch itself that controls the high brights and the windshield wipers.

Boykid88

Now that you mention it, this might also be what's wrong with my intermittent wipers as well. I'll have to look tonight if they feed through there as well.

Good Call, thanks

ropnjessi

I had this problem, lamp warning on/off, it was driving me nuts. The first time it was the exterior back of the cab, there are 3 bulbs there. The second time was a left signal bulb, the bulb elements looked good, but after looking at the fine wire used to make the contact into the socket, that was the problem. The wire actually was kind of forced into the groove so the contact was not consistent.

Boykid88

okay, so i've had this thing apart about 4 times now in the last week. I actually broke down and bought a new Front Control Module (FCM - $265cdn) after eliminating everything external. This fixed it!

I will now disect the old module in hopes of finding a fix. I was close to rewiring the headlights with aux relays but I will be trading this truck off soon so I'd like to keep it as stock as possible.