Headlight switch issues?

[cfmistry]

So my headlight switch is a little "rough" to turn (pulls out just fine). I'm not sure if that's normal with these cars. It has a little resistance, kind of feels like the mechanism is rusted. Also when I turn the knob all the way to full bright, everything turns off (like a short), but it consistently lights back up when I just turn the dimmer down a tad.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Cyrus

[dkindig]

The potentiometer in the light switches is a known failure point, with the typical failure being a complete loss of dash lights.

Generally this happens most often in cars with the lighted shift knob. Most of the time an owner accidently pulls the shift knob off not knowing about the wires from the dash illumination to the knob and one of the wires shorts to ground, burning up the dash light pot. Doesn't have to be that particular scenario, though. It could be a fault anywhere in the dash-light circuit that affects the dimmer potentiometer.

Just giving you the most common reason I've seen for complete failure. I'm not sure why as I've never pulled a switch apart, but most of the time the pot goes open-circuit before the fuse blows. It's not surprising that you're seeing intermittent operation.

Replacement switches are just as failure-prone and most will just jumper the light switch terminals so that the dash lights are on full bright without any variability rather than spend the money on a new switch.