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following information comes from discussions with people
who have experienced this problem over the years and from
my own experience from having it happen to me. I
researched and inquired about this to come to the
following conclusions. If your headlights begin to go out at times
or flicker on and off, they are showing a system flaw
that seems to occur after a number of years of using the
factory lighting setup. I understand there was even a
technical service bulletin on the headlight switch about
this. I have even heard of internal wiring getting too
hot and melting contacts and wires inside switches. The
diagram below shows the flow of current with the factory
setup to the headlights and fog lights. Using the
foglights and dim beams over time seems to be too much
for the system wiring. My first suggestion to solve this
problem is to stop using the foglights at all. Then I
would remove and inspect the headlight switch to see if
any of the contacts look darkened. Hopefully that is all
you will see and it would be adviseable to replace the
headlight switch. Next I would remove the lower
instrument panel trim and cover below the steering wheel
and the steering column trim panels and check to make
sure none of the wiring has gotten too hot. The turn
signal, dimmer, and wiper switch is called the
multifunction switch and it may have been damaged. If
everything looks okay, be relieved and replace the
steering column and trim panels.
At this point, you have to
decide if you will stop there or try to improve the
system. If you want to improve the lighting system, my
first suggestion is to rewire the foglights and ease the
load on the existing wiring and switches. I used the
method found here.
This will put your foglights on a relay system and ease
the load on the system. This method uses the existing
wiring and switches to operate the foglights and
headlights as the factory setup used to. I highly
recommend this if you plan on keeping and driving your
35th very often at night.
I hope this information is
helpful to you and improves your enjoyment of your
vehicle while improving the safety and visibility of
night driving.
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