Outrun

Has anyone here experienced a failure of their Honda headlight switch due to bad wiring? (black box behind the steering wheel that's connected to the rotary control/turn signal lever)

My original switch in my 1994 Civic failed a few years ago and I replaced it with a turn signal lever and headlight switch out of a wrecked Integra.

This switch is now starting to fail. High beams won't engage/click into place and the dash lights and headlights sometimes won't come on together. I have to fiddle with the rotary control to get things working.

The original switch had plastic melted around the metal contacts and I'm assuming this is what's happening with the Integra switch.

I'm curious about failure rates since this is a part that I'm assuming should last the life of the car.

The rotary **** and control stalk is fine. It's the black box that the control stalk attaches to that is bad. The plastic is melted around the metal contacts due to excessive heat at the wiring plug.

I'm using stock wattage 9003s/H4s.

Here's some pics of the faulty switch:

Old switch that just failed.


Civic switch I just installed.


Old switch on the left. Note the melted plastic.


Old switch.


Civic switch I just installed.


Wiring plug.




I'm wondering what the cause was/is.

danomatic93

It's pretty common for those combo switches to fail. Open the bad one up all the way to see it's inner workings. I made sense of it when I ripped my old one apart, but I don't remember what I deemed the main cause was. But, it had something to do with a plastic tab that shifts places when you rotate the headlight ****.

Outrun

I know the switches themselves aren't the problem. I'm on my 4th one. I think it's something with the wiring. I need to edit my post and title...I meant "headlight switch wiring" instead of "headlight switch".

I'm gonna try to take the dash apart and check all the wiring under there. All the fuses are fine so the only place left to check is the wiring.

I'm just wondering if anyone here had similar issues.

randomtask77

I had a problem where I would turn on my headlights and sometimes it would take a full 2 or 3 seconds before the headlights would actually turn on.

So I did this;

http://www.b18c5eg.com/how2/lightswitch/

and it did the trick.