90Kaccord

Please help. I have an 89 honda accord. My headlights went out a few months ago. I could get by if i held on the brights. I installed a new combination switch and everthing worked great for a month. Recently, my dashboard lights flicker a few seconds after turning the lights on and then my low beams AND parking lights went out. high beams work mostly, but have gone off and on. i don't know if this is related, but my idle changes when i turn my steering wheel when stopped. i took my car to a highly recommended electician and he told me to simply change the bulbs. i replaced them less than a year ago. seems to me that low beams and parking lights wouldn't burn out at the same time unless there was an issue.

213374U

Have you checked the fuses???

P_Adams

You're going to have to determine the common point for all this if you're now suffering both parking and headlamp system failures.
I say this since the way Honda individually fuses the headlights and the parking lamp systems seperately, any failures involving fuses would more than likely effect individual items rather than a system wide failure.

If, by inspection, you do find fuse issues with the headlamps, there is one point that has been a continuous Achilies heel for the 3rd Gen Accords with flip-up headlamps. The wires break within the headlamp bucket from the everyday flexing from opening and closing. It sometimes blows fuses and always causes the headlamp (affacted) to fail.
If all this checks out, we're going to have to start looking at common points. Ie: common power feeds, common switches (yes, possibly the multifunction or it's connector) and possibly relays.

There is another Forum for 3rd gens called http://www.3gees.com which specializes on this gen Honda's. It might bear looking at.

P

90Kaccord

it's definately not fuses. the electrician told me that i was getting power to the lights, but he did not check to see if parking lights were receiving power. if for some reason i have installed the wrong combo switch, would that trigger the outages?

P_Adams

No, if you had installed the incorrect "combo" switch, it would not have worked correctly from minute one (1).
So, at what point do you now stand? No headlamps, or no parking lamps or no to both.???
Tail lamps work?

90Kaccord

taillights are working. no low beams, no parking lamps. also, brights are starting to go. i had to flick lights on and off for a minute before the high beams worked this morning. when the high beams did not come on, the high beam indicator light was out as well. more trouble with dash lights.

90Kaccord

what's the average lifespan for a combo switch?