Haunted Headlights

Mean03V6

New Member
Jan 28, 2004
136
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Houston, Texas
Tonight, as I was parking my Stang in the driveway, I became convinced that it is haunted...lol. With the car idling in park and the headlights on, the headlights and fog lights began to flicker on and off in about 4 second increments. When I say flicker, I mean they went completely out and then flashed back on. Interestingly enough, I did notice that the parking lights stayed on the whole time. This same thing happened to me about a week ago and I was actually driving the car at night at the time. In that instance, I pushed the headlight nob into the off position and when I pulled it back to on, everything was fine. Tonight I just sat there to see if they would continue to flash unless I turned the lights off and then back on. They flashed for a period of about 20-30 seconds before finally staying on. Sometimes they'd be off for about 4 seconds, sometimes they'd flash quickly on and off. I'm hoping that it isn't any major electrical malfunction. I haven't checked to see if the fuse is loose in the fuse box yet b/c I figured that, if it was, the parking lights would have flashed as well. It may be worth mentioning that both times this happened, I was using both of my accessory power outlets...I had my radar detector plugged into the outlet in the console and my G-Tech meter plugged into the dash outlet. I hadn't ever used the console outlet until about two weeks ago, so I'm kind of wondering if there may be a short somewhere with it. Well, any advice or suggestion of what to check/do to fix the problem is greatly appreciated. :nice: :cheers:
 
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Do the simple checks first.

Check that the fuse in securely. Pull the headlight knob off and remove the headlight switch assembly to ensure all the connections are tight. Next trace along the headlight wires and make sure that there are no bear spots worn through the plastic tube that holds the wires. Make sure that the headlights are in the sockets good, and the wires aren't loose.

After that, let us know what you found.
 
MarvinMyCat said:
Do the simple checks first.

Check that the fuse in securely. Pull the headlight knob off and remove the headlight switch assembly to ensure all the connections are tight. Next trace along the headlight wires and make sure that there are no bear spots worn through the plastic tube that holds the wires. Make sure that the headlights are in the sockets good, and the wires aren't loose.

After that, let us know what you found.

:nice: Well, I found the time to dig into the problem today. First I checked the fuse, which was in securely. So, I proceeded to check step by step what you recommended and within about 5 minutes I had fixed the problem. The wires running to the headlight fixtures themselves were a bit loose. I went ahead and tightened them up and since doing that I have not had any problems. For grins, I also checked the wires running to the fog lights since they had been flashing as well, but all those connections seemed to be secure so I'm hoping they were just acting up b/c of the other loose connections with the headlights. Thanks for the help and if the problem should resurface, I'll be sure to let you know. Thanks again. :nice: :cheers: