Car headlights not turning off can be really annoying. You may be flashing your headlights on a super sunny day and people may think of you as a moron. If you don’t want people to think of you like that you may want to turn off your headlights. It also keeps draining your battery for no reason at all, again you don’t want to do that and therefore you should read this article and understand why your car headlight won’t turn off and what you can do to make them work effectively that is to turn on and off properly.
Headlights are used since the beginning of manufacturing of the cars and the technology is not very much changed. It is very much possible that failing headlights on a drive during the night all of a sudden can be very dangerous, it is also very difficult if your headlights just don’t turn off at all. Let’s understand what are the probable causes that are making your headlights work like this.
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What Cause Your Car Headlight To Not Turn Off?
There could be a lot of causes that may be leading your car headlights to not turn off, such as:
- Damaged Headlight switch
- The Multifunction switch is faulty
- Daytime running light module is disabled
- The light sensor is not working
- Relay is damaged
- Grounded wiring is loose and disconnected
Some cars are designed so that if the engine is shut off while the headlights are on, they will remain on for a specific amount of time. While some cars have daytime running lights, which is essentially just a system that automatically turns the headlights on but doesn’t affect the dash lights during the day. If that system fails, it may cause the headlights to remain on.
If you have one of the cars which have the engine and headlights connected, that system may have failed, and you might want to try shutting the headlights off before turning the engine off to see if that helps. But in the latter case, you can try setting the parking brake to see if that shuts the headlights off, as setting the parking brake typically disables daytime running lights. If that’s the case for you, then removing or replacing the daytime running light module will probably fix your problem.
What To Do If Your Car Headlights Won’t Turn Off?
If you think you are unable to treat the car at that particular time then you must follow these two things to make your car headlights turn off:
1. Disconnect Your Battery
Disconnecting the battery can be an efficient and quick way to stop your headlights from wrenching away the battery power. This will keep your battery from dying. You must disconnect one of your battery cables from the battery itself to do this. If you have disconnected a battery before then this might be a child’s play for you but if you haven’t had disconnected the wires from the battery before then you might require proper instructions, read below to understand how do you disconnect a battery.
- First and foremost you will be requiring a wrench and a socket that is sized appropriately.
- Disconnect the negative cable instead of a positive one in order to avoid a short circuit.
- The negative cable is found to be black in color and a negative symbol maybe there near the negative terminal.
- After you disconnect the negative battery cable you have to move the wire away from the battery, to avoid any circumstances of it getting back together.
Once you disconnect the battery, the headlights won’t be able to snatch out the power from your battery and your battery will be safe from getting dead. But disconnecting the battery may have some consequences that are the memory of your onboard computer will be flushed out and it will have to go through a relearning process again. This may create an impact on your fuel economy for some sort of time. One more thing that can happen to your car after disconnecting is you won’t be able to go through emissions testing in places where they read the codes as part of the test since it will show that the battery was disconnected. Also if your car stereo has a security function that requires you to enter a special code after you lose power then you should keep in mind to remember the special code beforehand or you may note it down somewhere so that you won’t lose the security code.
2. Remove A Fuse Or Relay
Removing the appropriate fuse or relay may be a little bit more complicated than just disconnecting the battery but if you inspect the correct fuse panel you will be able to do it. Since this will prevent a loss of power to your computer and radio you won’t have to deal with any fallout later on. You just need to locate the fuse panel and figure out which relay or fuse you have to pull.
If you know that a bad headlight relay is a culprit that is getting your headlights to not turn off, then the fix there is also to just replace the relay. This is actually a little easier to check yourself in a lot of situations since there’s a chance that multiple circuits may use the exact same type of relay. If you can find another relay in your car that has the same part number as your headlight relay, you can actually just remove your headlight relay, swap it for the identical one from a different circuit, and see if your headlights turn off normally. If the headlights turn off, then you just need to buy and install a new relay.
If you are not comfortable doing it yourself then you may ask a mechanic to do that for you and the average cost to replace a headlight relay is $79.99 – $99.99.
Average Cost To Replace The Car Headlight
So, the average cost of a halogen bulb is about $15 to $20, while some HID bulbs typically cost $100 or more. Whereas the average cost to replace an entire headlight assembly is $250 to $700.
Conclusion
In conclusion, now you know what causes the car headlight to turn off and what are the fixes you can try to deal with this issue. But if you are not ready to do it yourself then you may call an automotive repair center that will send a mechanic and do the repair work for you.
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