So I decided to take the back roads home. Away from all the city lights and street lamps, overcast night, and fog. Of all things to go wrong, my headlights went on and off, sometimes for 30 seconds, other times tenths of a second. A short somewhere, maybe exposed wire being grounded, or water inside.

bad headlight switch shorting out. or check the fuses. replaced my headlight switch all my intermittent light problems went away and have not come back.

Checked it this morning, no problems with the headlights. I'll be replacing the switch regardless, maybe all the wiring while I'm at it.

find the wires and wiggle them at different locations to see if you can get the headlights to dim or turn off. maybe use a test light too, those come in handy.

I did, and nothing happened. I'll have to replace the switch, and the harness just incase. Don't want the lights going out like that again. Scared the **** out of me when it did. Luckily, I can see pretty well in the dark, so I drove home ok.

It's more than likely the switch.

UPDATE: It appears it only happens when the high beams are on, and the engine is hot. I can run the high beams for about ten minutes before they start shorting. Turn them off and the lights are fine. All this has happened after I changed the passenger side lights when they burned out. What did I do?

Did you ever correct this problem? I have the same exact issue. I have replaced the switch three times. The switch gets very hot and the breaker inside kicks out. I can't find any shorts, If I unplug one highbeam while it clicking on and off it will stop.

I couldn't figure it out. I'm thinking it's something in the steering column wiring (cruise control/wipers/high beam switch). It only does it when I turn on the high beams. I have no clue. I might take it apart soon, once my Firebird is running.

Cool, let me know if you figure it out. I might have fixed mine but not positive yet. The current switch I'm using is a BWD. It still got pretty warm when I tested it but not burning hot like the last one and the lights stayed on about 20 minutes until I turned them off.
The only other thing I did to try and correct the problem was make sure my connectors were seated correctly, both my high beams were working and the connection was tight but the were not all the way on which is something I read on another board.
Good luck. I will let you know on my end as well.

oh, and I did find this today but haven't been bale to loko into the parts I have. The explaination makes sense as I would have thought a short would be an immediate kill, bit something that would happen after 10-20 minutes.

http://hudsonperformance.com/documen...ic_systems.htm

...also, went for the column idea as well, just remember, there are no wires up in the column where it tilts, the mutli function switch actuates a rod at near the bottom of the column, there is a switch down there that is for the high beams.

Just an update, the BWD headlight switch did fix my problem, stay away from anything that says Duralast on the box

sounds like u got a bad switch from autozone.. it can happen. i got a new headlight switch a duralast one that has been in my car for 2 years now as a daily driver.