I've got a short somewhere in my bright high beam circuit, I say that because if I leave my brights on for a few minutes it will begin to cut off intermittently, and my headlights will flicker on and off.

Curiously, my dome light in my car flickers in time with this if my door is open (if it's shut.... well the dome light isnt on anyway), but my instrument panel stays lit, however, my brights indicator in the instrument panel does flicker with the lights.

I perused it today trying to find something obvious, but Im not even sure where to look. Where is the relay for the brights?

It's just weird to me because my low-beams NEVER flicker, so obviously it's something specific to the high-beam circuit, looking at electrical diagrams, it seems like it should be pretty damn simple...

 

I don't think it's your dimmer switch, that's located on the steering column about halfway to the floorboard (have to lower the column to get to it). It might be the light switch in the dash itself. They are constructed with a bi-metallic thermal circuit breaker. Could be wearing out. When the lights draw enough current, the breaker heats up and opens the circuit, causing the lights to go off.

Same thing happened to me with a different car in the early 80's. I installed some after market lights which happened to draw more current than the switch could handle. With the high beams on, my lights would intermittently turn off for a second or two (really scary on dark country roads). I ended up installing a relay in the circuit and having the switch energize the relay to turn on the lights, similar to a fog light setup.

 

Interesting you mention that, because my lights are actually converted over to 9004 bulbs. So I bet they do draw more current than the stock lights... They're bright as hell.

Your story sounds really similar to mine... In your case, the actual switch in the dash that's the problem? And you fixed it by wiring the switch to a relay? I thought they ran on relays already?

 

Nope, stock lights don't run on relays. But it's no problem to convert them to relays. Many people actually do it to increase the headlight intensity (by shortening the path the current has to travel through thin wires and thus eliminating part of the voltage drop).

If you're using bulbs that draw more current than the car (and wiring) was designed for, you better put relays in otherwise you're risking electrical fire. And it's nothing pleasant.

Lou

 

So what all do I need to do? Am I gonna have to take apart my dash or what?

It seems pretty simple in theory, but I'm not sure what wires I need to work with and where to put the actual relay... Does it all just go in the fuse box or what?

 

It can all be done under the hood. For starters, you need a relay for each circuit - hi beam, lo beam. Also some 10AWG wire and a 20 amp fuse.

From the tech articles: see stage II
https://www.thirdgen.org/headlightupgrade