Low beam fault

[Hawklord]

Went out yesterday evening and lights working fine but when started the engine to come home I had no low beam headlights only high beam. Luckily the drive home was on country roads and only annoyed a few drivers with the high beam. Tested the headlights this morning and they are working correctly and can't get the low beam to fail. Any suggestions would be appreciated as I am now apprehensive about going out in the dark.

 

 

[steve b]

Are the fuses and board connections all ok? The quality of blade fuses is variable to say the least.

Steve

[Hawklord]

I haven't checked the fuses yet but looking at wiring diagrams it seems that there are separate fuses for right and left low beams so it would be very unlikely for both to fail intermittently at the same time.  I am now suspecting that it could be the indicator stalk switch as recently it has sometimes been difficult to keep the indicators on as the switch flicks back to the central position without turning the steering wheel back and the mechanism seems quite loose. 

[pete3000]

I'd go with the stalk switch. the resting position is for dipped beam, if the flash and high beam work?

[Peaklander]

It could also be the headlamp relay not contacting properly. I've had this recently. Lost dipped lamps suddenly at 50mph in the very very dark and had to flick beam on quickly. It's a bit disconcerting. They came back several miles later and then failed next morning at 6am before I'd had time to look. I cleaned the relay contacts and all has been good.

Here's a diagram that I posted recently on another thread.

 

[paime]

The headlight stalks are always failing so best to start there. You can take them apart and check the contacts are clean and the springs are all intact. They're annoyingly expensive to replace unfortunately!