all kinds of lighting problems

[norcalE30]

before you flame me, ive searched, and found nothing, so just bear with me here....

on my 86, i have to flip my high-beam switch on and keep my highs disconnected to make the lows come on.... now the guy down at prestige thinks its the stalk itself. ive already checked the relays. could it be the bulbs?

[John in VA]

If your car has the US set-up with sealed beams, the outer ("low beams") and inner (high beams only) lights are meant to be on when you turn on your high beams.
The outer lights have filaments for low beams as well as high beams. It sounds like your outer lights' low beam filaments are burned out.
I had a problem where while driving with lows on, the high beams would come on "by themselves." That was a problem with the headlight stalk. Somewhere there's a tutorial on bending a metal contact to get it to work correctly (could have been an E28 forum = similar setup), but I opted for a replacement stalk.

[norcalE30]

yeah, its prob just the filaments then... everything works fine except the lows... damn, i really dont wanna buy new headlights. guess this gives me an excuse to smoke em out lol

[John in VA]

Sylvania low beam headlight H5006 are ~$7 each. If you have Bosch, Hella, or Cibie H4 low beam upgrades you'll just need new bulbs, which are even available at Wal-mart.

[VacMan]

Sylvania low beam headlight H5006 are ~$7 each. If you have Bosch, Hella, or Cibie H4 low beam upgrades you'll just need new bulbs, which are even available at Wal-mart.

He has sealed beams and will need to buy the entire headlight.

[norcalE30]

^^^ yup yup

[Stephen]

a new sealed beam is like 10$

its really not that bad