So I have recently installed some silver star fog lights in my pre facelift headlights and now I have some problems. After install they worked perefectly for 2 days, but when I drove home and parked the car the lights wouldn't come back on. This is my second stalk install and inteas of replacing I took it off and cleaned it. I noticed the plastic was a little burnt and the copper piece was in full contact, so I cleaned everything up and reinstalled. After trying I noticed that it will come on if I wiggle it a ceratin way. After I get the headlights to work I can turn the headlights off and on a 100 times and they work, but if I let the car sit over night it take a little playing of the switch to get them to work. Can anyone explain why after I get them working they work until the car sits for a while and can I put a relay or fuse in line to take away some resistance?
Thanks

 

I think ImTheDevil either wrote or is working on writing a DIY guide for adding relays to the headlights to keep that little bastard from melting. The longer you keep the headlights on the softer that little piece of plastic gets, which is why they work sometimes and not others. No real good way around this besides replacing the stalk and using relays.

 

Yup, the plastic is continuing its death melt. If you disassemble the switch again you'll see more warpage in the plastic. Get another switch from the junkyard and swap it in.

Haven't written the actual DIY yet due to ridiculous time/labor demands on me at work this year (our company's 700,000 sq ft building and a lot of assets were destroyed in a flood in September 2011) but the gist of it is this:

Get two relays - I bought 20A
Find the low beam wire in the headlight harness bundle - cut it and attach the "car" side to the switch input/trigger terminal, and attach the "bulb" leg to the switched leg/output terminal. Apply battery power to the source terminal. Wire the ground terminal to a solid chassis ground.

This takes the headlight-level current out of the switch and flows it direct from the battery, through the relay, to the bulb, and reduces the current through the switch to the mA range. Install these with a replacement switch and you should have no worries from then on.

 

But once I get the headlights on I can turn them off and on a hundred times and they still work. I thank you for the info devil, but I don't know if I really know how to do that properly. I'll have to show my dad and see what he thinks. Do you think there is a DIY somewhere?
Thanks for all the info

 

There isn't yet that I know of but I will do my best to get one written up as soon as I can.

 

Relays are easy as pie to hook up, two of the connections are already there. Just add a constant power and ground.

 

Thank you so much.

In the mean while I did find this Headlight switch contacts

 

Look in the DIY subforum here on AF - I put up some info on the switch internals that may help here and there as well.

 

Thank you. I have already removed the switch and cleaned it.
I didn't see an updated DIY though

 

I've had enough issues with my switch in the past that I decided to do the relay install. I'll get pics and write it all up soon as I can.