Hey Folks,

I have a weird problem with my high beam headlights on my Vette. When I turn on the high beams they will work for 5 minutes or so and then every light in the car goes out. If I turn the head lights off then turn them back on, everything works again. Some times after running the high beams for a few minutes,all of the lights will flicker and if I dim the high beams quickly, everything is OK, but if I don't, surely everything will go out. What gives? Has anyone else experienced this problem and if so, how did you fix it? Thanks for the help.

It could be 1 of several things. It sounds like a fuse that is bad and "opening up under a load" or a broken wire that is doing the same thing or a faulty switch. What appears to be happening is that a componet of the light wiring circuit is going bad and is barely making connection. When you switch to high beams you are increasing the amperage load on the circuit and the weak connection is heating up and breaking the circuit. Too much load on a conductor will cause it to heat and hence expand. Not sure if your car has glass or plastic fuses but I have seen many fuses that are bad but will check good and only open under a load. What happens is the link breaks loose from the end cap but is still touching until the extra load heats it up and it pulls away from the cap. But it will look just fine and even test fine with an ohm meter when you take it out. A simple way to test is to use a simple test light on the fuse while in the car and see if it has 12v at both ends then switch to high beams making them quit and recheck again. If the fuse is the problem one end will not show 12v but the other will. Hope this helps. If not you can contact me direct and We can figure it out. I am an electrician by trade and older cars are so simple.

Thanks for the suggestions and offering to help further HDF-311. I will check all fuses and links. Someone suggested that the problem is in the headlight switch. What do you think about that? Could the switch cause every light in the car to go out?

I had a similar problem in an 82. The difference was, EVERYTHING would go out at once, which is a little frightening as, of course, the only time the lights are on is when it is dark!

Switching to highs or lows made everything come back on. What was actually happening during this was the switch was being jiggled.

It was the switch in the turn-signal stalk.