Well finally got the car running smoothly, after a long day of chasing down one problem after another on the car I'm finally heading home when the lights start acting up. The headlights would blink on and off. They would stay on for 4 seconds and stay off for 5 seconds. I'm guessing it's the high low switch on the floor acting up? But honestly I have not clue, I am hoping I don't have a loose connection some where...
Could be the dimmer switch, it also might be the light switch in the dash as it has a built in circuit breaker that gets weak after time and if you have changed headlight bulbs to halogen it may be the straw that broke the camels back. A good idea is to do the headlight relay mod as it will give you brighter lights and take the load off of the headlight switch. You can do a search in the technical section to find out how to do it
Another possibility is a voltage regulator that is allowing the charging system to run too high. This situation would also cause the circuit breaker in the light switch to trip like that. My first Comet did this on a road trip in 1981. When we got to our destination, my buddy showed me that you can take the OE regulator apart (drill the rivets) and make it adjustable. I would opt for a modern regulator now .... they should all be circuit boards now, instead of looking like a high school lab project inside .... lol. If you take the car to Advance Auto Parts or others, they will check your charging system for free. Unfortunately, the light switch got killed in the abuse it got from prolonged use like we did in order to reach our destination, and needed to be replaced.
Most of the time the shutting off/on is the headlight switch, but high wattage bulbs can cause issues... Unless it was about to fail, I would not think a little extra battery voltage could cause it to trip... At least I've never had a happy voltage regulator cause a issue, generally causes headlights have a short life(got a couple t-shirts for that one)... If voltage regulator fixed it, I'd repl the H/L sw as well... You could do a relay conversion that shifts the high current load to relays, a weak H/L switch would work fine...
I found the tech article on the relays, seems pretty simple. Luckily I already have everything needed for it. Hopefully I will be able to do this installation this weekend or next. Thanks guys!
BTW, in a pinch one headlight can be unplugged to drop load in half... Has saved my butt a couple times over the years...
Good to check your head lites wiring specially your grounds terminals if their are loose the head lite switch get hot and the circuit breaker stars to acting up ....little suggestion Good luck
In a lighting circuit, overall current decreases with a poor connection, switch will run cooler... At the point of corrosion, loose wire, etc will become hot because of added resistance... If resistance(poor connection) is inside the switch, it will heat till breaker becomes hot enough to cycle...
I installed the relays, really works great. Unfortunately the ones I had are On/Off relays and once they have power they remain on! Luckily I found an easy work around, they will work fine until I can get the proper ones.
If he's using latching relays, they'll be on until power is interrupted and then tuned on again which breaks the circuit...
