Fox T-Bird/Cougar Forums  

I've been having some problems with my 1988 XR7, low beams intermittent, highs were working mostly steadily.  Mine was definitely the multifunction switch on the column.  I could smell it being hot when driving at night for any distance.  I took it apart last night and one of the contacts in the hi/lo portion of the switch had melted down into the plastic a bit and the plastic was gooed up around it blocking the connection.  it also kept the switch from alternating contacts to switch from high to low reliably.  I'm thinking this overheating must be a design flaw. 

I did notice that if I hot-wired the lights direct to the battery they were considerably brighter, I think the engineers undersized the wiring for the load, similar to what they did with the Gen 2 alternator to cause all those associated problems (like, oh, catching fire :) 

I'm going to replace the switch - 55 bucks locally.  Although I got the hi/lo working again, for now, the detent for the turn sigs is broken and I have to hold the turn switch to activate it, cheapie pot-metal it looks like, snapped in the middle of the detent.  I've got two relays and I'll wire them in on a fuse link straight from battery to the lights, and just use the wiring from the bulb connector to energize the relays. 

These lights were so bad when I got the car that I hit a deer I couldn't see until I was right up on it, standing in the road.  Way dim, and I'm going to either swap front clips  (eventually) for an 86 style, moulding be darned, or throw some 4666 bulbs in the sockets with the front plastic removed (they fit snugly but it'll need adjusted by a shop with a beam measuring tool.)  4666 sealed beams might just be the way to go, but it loses the aero look on the front with sunken headlights which sucks, the original plastic does weird stuff to the pattern, which is pretty good from the sealed beams.  Tried sanding and polishing the original plastic but that didn't go well. :)

Relays should definitely help by getting that 15-20A load out of the dash/column harness.

Cabby

Not really like said before all you really have to do is a headlamp model like phone and my instruction show

The mods I did released all energy and wants across the multifunction and the headlamp switch

Without auto lamps makes the task slightly simpler and at the end of the day you get to send direct Battery power out to the headlamps without the resistivity of a headlamp switches internal moving parts

In the EV TMs foe I have in our signatures you can actually go drill into the pages showing the  main light switch and there will be a certain little iconic symbol illustrating the thermal circuit breaker built inside that headlamp switch itself

A relay mod for your headlamps and marker lamps is all that needs to be done

I personally wouldn't stop there that I would go ahead and do a relay mod for your irrigation and accessories circuit as well to relieve heat off of your ignition switch

All this stuff is posted in the electrical text section

If your headlamps are still switching off and on do not do the relay modification

There must be another problem

Like mentioned earlier there is a thermal circuit breaker made inside the headlamp switch which would be the primary culprit for switching headlamps off and on

You have already mentioned you swap the headlamp switch out

When I get back to my office I can look at some wiring  diagrams to try to put two and two together

This sounds kind of tricky

Again do not do the mod

Those switches are overloaded by design. Slave it out or you will have 2 bad switches. The circuit breaker is internally in the switch and it is NG. Replace the switch and slave it out pr0nTO!!