Help! Headlights will not go off!!

[CougarSE]

Last night after coming home I got out of my truck as usual and went inside. This morning my girlfriend came over and woke me up. She told me that the lights were on in my 98 Mountaineer. I went outside and sure enough the lights were on as if the switch was on, but it was not. The truck started right up as if nothing was wrong so the lights must not have been on long.

Ok so my truck of course is a 98 Mountaineer 5.0. It has Keyless entry and I added the autolamp mirror as many others have. That mirror has been in my truck now for 4 or 5 months with out an issue.

So far I tried turning the headlight switch on and off to no prevail. I started the truck and turned the autolamp off on the mirror (96 mirror) and after that didn't work I just unplugged the mirror and still the lights stayed on. So after trying the switch and unplugging the autolamp mirror I gave up and went fuse hunting. I ended up under the hood in the distribution block. I removed fuse 12 and only the headlights went off, the parking lamps, tail lamps and cluster lamps stayed lit. I reinstalled fuse 12 and removed fuse 11. This made all the lights go off.

Well after talking to Gumby and him telling me to further diagnose by unplugging the GEM I went back out to the truck to find it stone dead. I had left the headlight switch on by accident even though none of the headlights would light. Why the battery would go dead with no power to the headlight circuit I duno.

So at the moment the battery is charging. Please help! I just got a new job and I have to be at work at 6am tomorrow.

 

[trevell407]

Check the headlight switch and th pigtail behind it.
The same thing happened to me, even the girlfriend waking me up part, weird .
2 of the wires behind the switch looked like they caught fire and fused themselves together.
I cut them and took them all apart individually and soldered and shrink wrapped them.

 

[budwich]

you wouldn't happen to have the DRL option? IF not, then your most likely "culprit" is a stuck headlamp relay which is used by the autolamps to turn your lights on.

 

[Cobraguy]

Good call Budwich. I agree. That's where I would look first.