I've been driving my '97 around for the past few days with a dim right side headlight and the highbeam indicator on the dash glowing faintly.

I went to pull the right side headlight tonight and found that both the headlights are not working anymore, both high and low beam. The highbeam indicator is also on, full brightness, no matter whether the high or low beams are on.

First I checked the bulbs, they both work fine.

Then I bench tested the headlight relay. It also works as expected on the bench.

Any suggestions on what could be causing the highbeam indicator to come on while the headlights don't work??

 

you could be having a problem with the steering column switch assembly.

 

Got it figured out!! I ran through the trouble shooting procedure in the shop manual. It said to fix the grounds on the headlights.

Turns out that there is more to it then that though...

The dim headlight on the right side was a ground issue. The ground wire was not doing its thing (and as a result the plug melted too) and the light was grounding through the highbeam circuit (thats why the highbeam indicator was glowing dimly before the lights failed).

The reason that the lights failed in the end was that the left bulb got screwed up, most likely by having the right side grounding through it. So, when the left bulb went ****-up the right bulb lost it's ground and also went out. The interesting thing was that both bulbs bench tested fine. It wasn't until I started running duplicate 12 volt and ground wires to the left bulb that I found the problem.

So, if the headlights both fail together and you have the highbeam indicator on all the time, replace the bulbs and fix the grounds.