97 Chevy Headlights Just Cut Out Randomly....Anyone heard of this?

[winford hackworth]

Mine has started doing the same thing this week. 1997 k1500. First it was just on high beams. But this morning they went out on low. I turn them off for a couple minutes and turn back on they will work. I was almost to work so when I got parked I put on high and it took about 2 minutes and they went out.

 

[Jong69]

I just bought a 1996 gmc jimmy yesterday after noon and by the time that I was on my home it was dark. I turned on the headlight switch all of the tail and marker lights and the dashboard lights all came on and works but I don’t have any high or low beam lights on either side. I just only have the daytime running lights. I took me almost 2 hours to drive 50 miles do to not being able to see the road very well because the daytime running lights weren’t very bright. I’ve check the fuse panel on the left side under the dash and all the fuses were all good and I looked under the hood for a fuse panel but I didn’t find one anywhere. When I got home I took the lights out of my other jimmy that I know works but still no change. So I was hoping that I could get some help on where to look and start and if there’s another fuse or relay panel somewhere else

 

[delta_p]

For the headlights going on/off, inside the headlight switch is a circuit breaker. if the current to the lights exceeds the breaker set point by heating up the breaker trips. When the temperature comes back down the breaker resets. It's should do that so you could limp home night and get a new switch later and fix the current problem.

John69... it seems like the headlight switch might need to be checkout out to see if it feeds power to the lights. if the daytime lights remained on when you switched on the lights, that's another indication of the switch because power out to the lights goes to the running light module lamp feed which should have told the module to turn off the running light relay, and it should have gone dark when you made the switch. probably another safety thought from GM.

The daytime running lights power feed is on a separate feed, fuse, and path, not through the headlight switch.

 

[mars2878]

on my co-workers eclb dually, he had a persistent issue. he was told (not by me) that it was the headlight switch & then a multi-function switch. fast forward 6 months to when I find out, overheard him talking to someone else that he was on his 2nd headlight switch & 3rd multi-function switch one of which melted.
So I suggested that he check his headlight harness where it passes through the radiator support, he might have a shaffed wire because he removed the grille several times for defective aftermarket bulbs. Low & behold, that's what he found & fixed it. He was happy until a week later when he started to have issues again, this time he came directly to me. I told him to check the headlight harness on the dash end because he kept removing the bezel thinking that he a switch problem. He found a shaffed wire from pulling too far on the harness.

I believe that all of his problems stemmed from the shaffed wire @ the support caused by the constant removal of the grille for various repairs & or the headlight bulb replacement.

when he fixed the shaffed wires, he doubled up on the looming to help prevent it from happening again.