So the other night I'm leaving a buddies house. Get in the truck and do all the usual stuff, crank engine, adjust wheel, check mirrors, you know, the usual.

So I turn on the lights and nothin. I turn on and off the light switch to no avail. I'm thinkin that there's no way I burnt both bulbs out so I raise the steering wheel to get out and check and the durn things come on! So I lower it and they go off. I try the high beams and they are unaffected by this raising and lowering of the steering wheel. Only the low beams are going haywire. What in the world would make the lights act this way? I hate driving around with my high beams on but I can't drive with the wheel in the top position either.

Anyone else have this happen?

 

Under the steering column wires are proned to being pinched/broken. Hasn't happened to me yet, but I know of a few guys with 2nd gens (1500-3500) where this happened. Need to take the lower dash/kick panel off and start looking into the wiring harness. Might need to take the plastic around the ignition switch off as well.

PS stop adjusting your wheel everytime you open the door and this won't happen again!

 

More common than you think...... Dodge saved a penny and a half cutting those wires a wee bit shorter. Fix them and yea, don't adjust your wheel all the time.

 

Walk to the rear of the truck, there is a word on the upper lefthand side of the tailgate that will explain it all....

What those guys^^^^^ say, though, really.

 

Thanks for the help guys. I'll get into it this weekend I guess. Not adjusting the steering wheel isn't an option. I drive with it one notch above lowest setting which makes it difficult to get out. I reckon I can just lengthen the wires a bit to remedy the problem.

 

Check wire connections on the multifunction switch. Mine did the same thing and I found one wire completely off the mini-spade connector. Reconnected and that fixed the no low beam problem, checked all the wires and found a couple others that weren't completely seated on the mini-spades on the switch.

 

I joke all the time about Dodge being cheap with the wire but what I think really happens is the whole loom migrates towards the dash from tilting the wheel.
If you could figure out a way to pull up some slack from under the dash and firmly attach it so it couldn't move it would be a lot easier than lengthening 20 wires.

 

^^^I was also thinkin something slips or loosens because the complaint is rare and usually for older trucks...