This morning went to drive away and no headlights. Get on here and some folks said the dimmer switch was probably the culprit, pretty common. Replace that and no change. Return that part and get headlight switch. Pull old headlight switch and all the plastic on the inside is charred white and some of the contacts now have burn residue on them instead of being gold. What could cause this? Is it safe to install the new switch? Could it have just given out and that is what happened?

 

Heres an afterthought-my washer fluid has been low and the light has been on constantly while the truck is running for probably a month. Could that have caused the short? I never dim my lights and dont really do all that much night driving.

 

These factory headlight switches tend to get overloaded and burn out. Check all the fuses, make sure they are ok. If the wiring harness to the switch is ok, then just get a new switch.

Oh, if you tow a trailer make sure you have either the factory tow harness, or that you use a relay to control the trailer marker lamps. Also if your truck has lots of marker lights (for extra coolnes) make sure you have a relay to run those as well. These factory switches had a very low current capacity.

 

Ya like dl1221 said the factory switches cant handle aolt of power so if you are running any extra lights make sure to run them through relays, might even be a good idea to run the headlights through relays.

 

If I recall there was a recall (no pun intended) on the headlight switch on some year models, but I do not know where to look. You may want to do a search on this subject in this forum to find about the recall because it has been written up extensively.

John (DH)

 

I think the recall was only for 3500 models up to X date in 1996 or 97.

 

I have a spare headlight switch (no fogs) laying around somewhere. If you have a need.