TLDR: Headlights pop up, don't light up. Tail lights work still.

I've tried searching for a solution to my problem, but I haven't found a fix that seemed to be exactly mine. Apparently there are many different issues that happen to the headlights, who would have thought making them pop up adds even more potential problems haha.

2002 convertible

So for months now my headlights have been giving me problems. For a long time it was after I had driven the car, then get back into it a few hours later, the headlights would pop up but not turn on. Sitting in the car with it running for a minute or two they would then turn on. Then one day I found out that if I open and close my door, the lights would light up. This was my solution for a long time. I figured I had a wiring issue in the door that some how effected the headlights. But just a week or two ago, opening and closing the door did not make my lights turn back on. And I sat in a parking lot for about 15-20 minutes trying to get them on. They finally did come on with one last door slam.

My door has other wiring issues since sometimes the entire door control stops functioning. I opened the door up, reconnected everything to ensure a good connection. Which seemed to fixed my door control problems (at least for now). But now my headlights still don't light up, and they're staying up after turning the car off. Got them to come back down the next day by just driving away, but they stuck up again now.

So I don't know if the door has anything to do with the headlights, or if the door closing just happens to be shaking something else.

Worth noting:
High beams still work, though drives side one is dim now. Not sure if that's after this problem or already was, I rarely use my high beams.

I have aftermarket side view mirrors that have built in blinkers(just noting cause maybe it's pulling power some how), though I've had them for years now and the headlight issue did not pop up until significantly later.

Rolling up or down my windows has always caused pretty much everything to dim in my car, most notably the headlights. This has been ever since I got the car back in 07.

I've tried cleaning the ground wires near the headlights, one on drives side and one on passenger side, the grounds that are about a foot back from the headlights. I saw a diagram that has another ground right at the headlights, but I couldn't visually see where they were to try to clean them.

Since the lights do eventually come on, it leads me to believe something is possibly loose, but I have no idea what it is. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Shaun

 

Hmm, one culprit could be the MFS itself. Fortunately it's not very hard to change.

 

 

Not sure if it matters at all, but I almost never use the MFS for my headlights. I just use the auto on at night feature. Does the MFS still go without using it, and will it stop the auto feature from working also?

 

Figured I'd follow up with my results in case anyone stumbles onto this thread. It was my MFS. Was a pretty easy fix to do. One of the screws holding on the MFS was a real pain for me to remove because my torx bits were a bit large. Also for taking apart the MFS itself I needed to get a long thin T9 torx (at least an inch long).