QuestionI will do my best to keep this short.
I bought this 98 corolla it had light damage to the right front side.
At the time I bought it the headlight on the left side worked but would start flickering after a while. This also caused the dash lights and side marker lights to flicker.
When I repaired the body damage, I inspected the wires.... I didn't see any physical damage done to any of the wiring.... so I put it all back together.
I replaced all the headlights and the side marker lights with new OEM parts. Now none of the head lights work at all.
All fuses have been replaced.
The two relays under the hood (burnt orange in color# One is on the radiator support above the passenger side headlight, and the other in the fuse box under the hood on the drivers side.
Neither of these will engage when the headlights are turned on. I checked the headlight connectors for power, I only get like + or - 100 mvolts. The connectors do not seem to be corroded, the connector do show to have continuity.
When the dash lights and the side marker lights start to flicker, I can hear some clicking under the dash. I took the dash apart and found a small black rectangular relay on the back side of the fuse box closest to the drivers side door.
It is the one making noises #as if it were engaging and disengaging-engaging constantly#.
Something else that may or may not have anything to do with the problem is..... that when the motor is running, when I turn on the A/C, After a bit this triggers the problem #flickering of the side marker and dash lights#.
Even if the headlight switch isn't turned on the lights will still come on and flicker, the only way to make them stop flickering is to turn on the headlight switch. If I turn off the headlights while the engine is running they will start to flicker again. The only way to stop this is to shut off the engine.
I thought I would mention that the DRL seems to be partially working, because when it gets dark the dash lights and the side marker lights and tail lights will come on by themselves #even If I do not manually turn them on)
Could it be that the DRL relay is bad, or possibly the headlight and high/low beam switch?
thanks in advance for your replay,
Brian Mizell
AnswerWhat you need to check is for a loss of ground to the headlight system, if you look under the dash to the left of the steering column hear the firewall you will find a connector that has a lot of ground wires going into it, these are all whit/blk, this is a ground bus, it has an end cap on it that connects all the wires together, remove the end cap, it may be taped to the harness, check the connector for corrosion or signs of overheating and repair the wires as needed, check each of them to body ground with an ohm meter, also look for burned wires at the fuse box connectors, once the wires are repaired replace the main DRL relay which is behind the glove box up high under the dash.
