illusion

so the last few weeks, when i am driving at night with my lights on, the headlights will randomly just shut off. this is kinda scary because its hard to see.

initially it would only happen when i would try to turn on the high beams, and then the lights would go off. but now i'll be driving and the lights will just randomly turn off themselves. MOST of the time i can just fiddle with the switch, turning the switch on and off, turning the highbeams on and off, and eventually the lights will come back on. but not always.

the bulbs look ok. obviously since i can eventually turn the lights back on, the bulbs are good. i went to autozone and the guy suggested to replace the combination dimmer switch, which is the actual stick that comes out of the steering wheel to turn on your blinker turn signals and to turn on the light. so i replaced that and everything worked ok for a day, but now the problem returned last night, so i'm not sure if the first day was just luck and the problem was not the dimmer switch. last night i pulled over and even though the headlights were out, the rear taillights were in fact working. i hadn't checked that before but confirmed that last night.

previously when the lights would fail, and i switch on the highbeams on and off, i would get the blue icon highbeam indicator telling me that the highbeams are switched on. now when everything fails, that blue indicator doesn't even show (this was both with the previous combination dimmer switch and with the new one)

i checked the headlights fuse under the hood and it looked ok. the thing that i originally thought could be the problem is this: i replaced the stock headlights with JDM 1-piece headlights. the JDM lights required different bulbs, so when i installed the headlights, i had to attach the JDM bulb connectors to my existing wires. this was about 6 years ago. i twisted the wires together and made my best attempt to solder the connection and then cover it with a rubber piece. its worked fine for all these years, thats why i'm not so sure that this is the problem. do you think maybe these connections somehow went bad? can that happen? and even if so, could it cause this intermittent light failure?

one other thing to note, a few weeks ago also my car wouldn't start. i would turn the key and it would just keep cranking but never turn over. sometimes it would start up on the third try. another time i would just leave and come back in 10 minutes and it would work. i randomly decided to check the oil stick and it seemed low. i got an oil change and haven't had the problem since. dont know if thats related

you guys have any other ideas? relays or something?

Greyout

I'd start w/ the relays.

When you spliced in the new bulb sockets, did you splice the LH to the left harness and the RH to the right harness? I would blame the wiring if each light was failing on its on, but if they are both failing at the same time, thats probably not the problem.

illusion

its hard to tell if this new combination dimmer switch has helped or not. last night it definitaely failed. but tonight everything was ok.

under the hood, the fuse box has two separate relays: Lighting Relay and Dimmer Relay. i'm not sure what the difference is. do you know?

i went to NAPA and bought a new relay which i seems to replace the Lighting relay. but the guy said that the problem sounds like a problem with the switch. he said that the switch has a sensor that cuts off if the temperature is too hot. and that could be why the lights shut off, but then eventually come back on. but i told him that i already replaced the switch. he said that the new switch could be bad.

i was gonna say that of course the wiring must be correct: left to left and right to right. HOWEVER, i am not 100% sure. when i think back when i received my JDM lights, i'm not sure if the two connectors were labelled or not. i suppose it COULD be possible that i used the left connector on the right headlight. lets suppose worst case, they shipped me two headlights and two connectors. and when i chopped off my stock connectors and attached the JDM connectors to the stock wires, they were for the opposite lights. would this matter? both sides use the same bulbs and the lights are never on individually..