dims. yay light.
switch to brights. yay more light!
switch back to dims. OH NO WHERE DID MY LIGHT GO BACK TO BRIGHTS NOW.


I think my headlights overheated. I have H4 bulbs in the DOT plastic lenses you can buy at autozone or shucks, napa, etc etc. if you go from dim to brights and back to dims within I'd say a good 15 seconds, they work fine. but anything over that and the dims will not work until the bulb cools down, it seems. i toggled the switch a few times and drove with no lights for short bursts, and just as i started pulling over to mess with it until they would work, they came back on.

My fuses are fine. it's happened a few times at very rare occasions but i dismissed it for whatever inane reason. according to my gf ONCE the headlights did not turn on a soon as they came up, too. Any insight?

 

Dirty fusible link terminals will cause this type of a problem. I'd clean all the terminals on the fusible link box.

 

Could also be the fusible links themselves. I'd do like 74RX4 suggests and then
replace the fusible links with these:

 

Could be carbon buildup on the contacts inside the switch. This is a very common problem, because the full voltage for the lights runs through these tiny little wires, through the switch, then to the lights. That's a lot of restriction (small wires) and stress on the contacts due to the amount of electricity flowing through them.

Here's a method on how to clean them. Read all the way to the bottom, because I found that it is almost as effective spraying it down without disassembling the system.

https://www.rx7club.com/1st-generation-specific-1979-1985-18/easy-fix-4-your-headlight-headaches-418572/

Another way to improve the lighting and avoid these issues is to install relays in the lighting system. Very worthwhile mod.



.

 

i used to have this problem too. turns out the bulbs i was using(came with the light housings) were absolute crap.. even started a small fire in my old corolla. So that could be another thing to check.. dont need any small fires.

 

ah, forgot to say, i do not have fusible links anymore. I think i am going to do a HID installation soon, but the relay upgrade doesn't sound bad at all. I'll clean everything too.