96 Headlight intermitant Mystery

[mike2004tct]

Read many posts on the subject, didn't find any answers to our problem;

My daughter's '96 Sunfire, no DRL.
When turning on the headlights, sometimes there's a delay of ~ 5 seconds before the lights come on, most times they won't light up at all.
When they don't light at all, we can turn on the high-beams. After about 10 minutes of driving with the brights on, clicking the stalk back to the low beams will cause the headlights to light-up.

I'm guessing it can't be a bad ground because the brights work.
Any ideas?

[sunfiregirl_96]

if ya read all the posts, you might have found something to try, but here are a few suggestions...
check the relay under the hood, could be something as simple as that, i think its near the battery(on the right side looking under the hood) follow the wires, you;ll find it, cheap to replace...get one at the junkers
or it could be something as dumb as the combi switch inside the car (the one to turn the headlights on) that one is expensive...
and just because the lights work one way doesnt necessarily mean that there is no short..follow them all the way through...you never know.
best i can do...i'm still having problems with mine...and I've replaced everything from the headlights to the combi switch

[mike2004tct]

Update, For now they're working as they're supposed to. Here's what I did.

Took a quick look at the wiring under the hood with the light switch on but no headlight illumination. Didn't see any breaks in the wires, then I shook all the harness and wires without any success (idiot's ground check).

I next took the top cover off of the steering column and sprayed the switch (stalk assembly) with compressed air, cleaned it out fairly good.
Lights came on after this experiment, but it could be coincidental.

Because of the type of problems, I'm guessing it's in the switch. A quick search of parts store shows it to be a $40 to $50 part depending on where you buy it. (Autozone and Napa respectively)