I have a 1988 4x4 and the high beams stoped working, i can pull the lever and the high beam work. also the dome light quit. any suggestions? Thanks

 

Possibly a ground or loose wire. Do your high beams work or not? You say they don't and then you say they do so I'm a little confused.

Rob

 

i have the same problem they only work when you hold the lever in place. mine if you try to turn them on it turns the headlights off

 

Headlight combo switch:
- http://www.4crawler.com/4x4/CheapTri...eadlight_Combo

 

may be a combo switch.. may be something else in that little mechanism, take the thing apart and sand very lightly on all the moving connections just take enough of to freshen them up a bit i had a similar problem and that fixed it.

 

I dont know about the dome light but my high beams quit and then would work every now and again. I tore the steering wheel apart, took out the mechanism where the high beam lever is and THOROUGHLY cleaned it. There was grease and dirt in there from hell to breakfast. Make sure if you do this not to loose the little ball bearing at the base of the lever!
That fixed the problem and I havent had an issue with it since.

 

yeah thats what i did. its funny toyospearo my great grandpa used to ALWAYS say hell to breakfast him and my dad were the only people ive ever heard say that

 

I got that from my grandpa. We we would be herding cattle and one would get away and he would say "by hell a friday git after it before it's gone from hell to breakfast!!!"

Did cleaning it fix it??

 

I have the same problem on my 88 truck. I have another switch to change out but I haven't tried cleaning it yet..

 

my great grandpa ran cattle too

 

If you hold the lever as if you were flashing your lights then the bright lights work, the dims work fine but when you press the lever to turn on the high beams the lights go out.

 

did you clean those connections in there?
edit: the little round brass colored ones

 

That is pointing exactly to the combo switch. If the highs work in flash mode, then the wiring, relay and bulbs are fine. Only difference between flash and high beam mode is which contacts are used in the combo switch. Find the contacts that close in the switch in high beam mode and clean them as noted on the web page I posted above:

 

4Crawler you de man!! did exactly as you told me today and now i have high beams, thanks a mill. James

 

Yep, it is either dirty contacts or have heard of one case where one of the connectors running down the steering column had slightly pulled apart and disconnected the high beam wires there.

 

Ok I'm having a similar problem. I have a 95 4Runner, my high beams are basically my low beams. When set to low beams the head lights are very bright, you could almost consider them high beams and than when I flip the switch forward to high beams they dim very low, too low for even low beams. I can't figure it out. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Help would work too

 

Likely those are 9004 bulbs:


Could be someone may have installed something like a 9007 bulb in there. 9004 and 9007 bulbs have the same type of connector but differ in how the pins are wired. What you may be seeing is that your low beams are hitting one filament (like normal) and the high beams are hitting both filaments (in series) and making that glow dim, since you have twice the resistance in line and thus half the current and a fraction of the light output.

 

Thanks I'll Check that it sounds totally possible. So 9004 are the ones that are to be in there right?

 

Yes, should be either 9004 in the newer 2nd gen headlights or H4s in the older rectangular ones:

http://www.4crawler.com/4x4/CheapTri...l#HarnessTypes

 

I second the combo switch. There are two different sets of contacts in the combo switch for the high-on and high-flash. The high-on tends to get messed up because of the high current going through it and because it's used a lot more (see 4Crawler's website).

I followed 4Crawler's instructions to clean up mine (high-n wouldn't come on every time that I switched from low to high-on). It's an easy job. My switch contacts weren't greasy/dirty, it just needed the contacts cleaned up with very very fine sand paper.