Alright, so electrical gremlins are way above my pay grade. I've been having an issue where occasionally my low beams won't work. The high beams still work, as do a set of auxiliary driving lights which are wired to the low beams (they have their own switch inside, but they only work if the low beams are switched on, even if the low beams themselves aren't lit at the moment).
So far I have tried replacing the headlight relay under the hood, with no success there.
This did happen last year at Christmas, for the last 50 miles of a drive from TX to CO, which sucked... At that time, a local shop replaced the lighting pigtail (I think? It was a pigtail of some sort, though I didn't get too into the details with them), and things worked after that. It has only started doing this again in the last month or two, and it's very occasional. They work most of the time, except when they suddenly don't.
Other things that might be useful to know - they don't go out while the car is running, they tend to simply decide not to work upon a given engine start. But restarting the engine a few times doesn't seem to fix it. The headlight fuses look fine to me. And I just recently installed front LED turn signal lamps, but haven't gotten around to installing the new LED flasher relay for them yet (I don't think that's important, but it's all a system, so who knows...).
Anyone got thoughts? Please note that my limited mechanical skills are even more limited when it comes to wiring stuff - I don't know crap about vehicle wiring or electrical diagrams. I just thought this might be fun and useful before going to see a mechanic, in case there was some easy fix I'm unaware of or this is a common problem that someone has posted a walk-through of before (though I haven't found other threads with this exact issue).
Thanks in advance for the collective wisdom of the forum!
So far I have tried replacing the headlight relay under the hood, with no success there.
This did happen last year at Christmas, for the last 50 miles of a drive from TX to CO, which sucked... At that time, a local shop replaced the lighting pigtail (I think? It was a pigtail of some sort, though I didn't get too into the details with them), and things worked after that. It has only started doing this again in the last month or two, and it's very occasional. They work most of the time, except when they suddenly don't.
Other things that might be useful to know - they don't go out while the car is running, they tend to simply decide not to work upon a given engine start. But restarting the engine a few times doesn't seem to fix it. The headlight fuses look fine to me. And I just recently installed front LED turn signal lamps, but haven't gotten around to installing the new LED flasher relay for them yet (I don't think that's important, but it's all a system, so who knows...).
Anyone got thoughts? Please note that my limited mechanical skills are even more limited when it comes to wiring stuff - I don't know crap about vehicle wiring or electrical diagrams. I just thought this might be fun and useful before going to see a mechanic, in case there was some easy fix I'm unaware of or this is a common problem that someone has posted a walk-through of before (though I haven't found other threads with this exact issue).
Thanks in advance for the collective wisdom of the forum!