Bright Headlight indicator
 

Hey all,

My brights indicator stopped working a while ago. Not the most important thing and it took me a while to get to it. I assumed just a burnt indicator bulb but the bulb still works.

Here's the weird thing: the indicator does not light at all except when I unplug a cable from the back of the gauge cluster housing. Then the indicator DOES work except in inverse: it lights when the brights are off and is off when the brights are on.

So from this I can conclude that: the bulb still works, the switch still works, and they are still connected somehow. Apart from this, I'm unable to come up with any reasonable diagnosis. Anyone here that is smarter with electrical things than I and can venture a guess as to what is wrong?

For what it's worth, I have non-original headlight relays and a non-original, SR5, cluster but the bright indicator worked for some time after swapping those things.

I greatly appreciate any help.

We would not know how to troubleshoot without knowing how far your circuit has departed from stock, AND what "when I unplug a cable" is.
On stock circuit, high indicator comes on because if current bleeding through filament of low-beam bulbs through the high-beam indicator to ground. It goes out when low-beam is on where pin 6 of switch connects to ground, shorting both sides of the indicator bulb to ground.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a4...-no?authuser=1

This behavior is typical when upgrading headlights to LED. If you've upgraded headlights to LED, you'll probably need to add a resistor to one of the headlight circuits. This is the resistor I used to get my bright indicator working again:https://www.superbrightleds.com/more...lbs/2932/6284/. I only needed the one for my setup. There's information peppered around the web about this problem. If that doesn't help and you need more specifics, probably post some pics/specs of your headlight setup for better help.

sorry to bring up a old thread but curious would this work for my rav 4 2005 my high beams light on dash doesn't light up?

Hard to tell and may not apply to 2005 and later. Truck/4Runner headlight circuit changed around transition to newer gen around 1996.

First post, old thread bump, and completely wrong vehicle. Congrats on the hat trick.

Explanation and solution
 

I put the attached document together following a few weeks of research, testing and building a solution. Hope it helps someone who finds themselves in the same position.
Cheers,
Mike

The document
 

I would love to see this document. I put in LED headlights with resistors on each the indicator light on my dash worked for a while and then stopped now I can’t get it to pass inspection because of that. I would love to see what information you have available on this document to see if it sheds light on anything.

Hmm, looks like the document didn't upload. I'll try again.

Done, see original post.

Has to be a simpleish answer
 

So frustrating to know my highbeam indicator light used to work not sure when it stopped working. I do know it was after I put the LED headlights in with correct resistors according to yotamasters. I need this little blue indicator to work for inspection. Light bulbs are good, fuses are good. I guess I can go buy another relay and hopefully it works but I’m not super confident. Besides that I’m lost as to what is next.