Hello, as you can see, I'm new to this forum. I've had my Civic for about two years now, but I hope to have it a lot longer, hopefully with the help of this forum as well. I dove about 80 pages into the tech forum to try to find an answer, but didn't.

So right to the problem:

A few days ago, both of the low beam headlights on my 1995 Civic DX Sedan stopped working. The high beams still work, the running lights still work (the orange ones), the tail lights are fine as well.

What I have concluded thus far:

1 - None of the fuses associated with the headlights are blown. I doubted this was the problem anyway, because each low-beam has a seperate fuse under the dash, and the light fuse under the hood is for all of them apparently.

2 - The bulbs are probably fine, I doubt they would have burnt out simultaneously, and I took a pretty good look at them and they didn't look like they had.

3 - I did some minor electric work in the lower dash (in the middle), replacing part of the lighter socket and soldering the wire back on. The socket works fine now, and I doubt this would have any effect on the headlights, but it might have. While I'm not sure when the lights stopped working (I didn't do much nighttime driving this week), I'm pretty sure they were working at least three days after my repairs.

4 - The most likely problem in my mind is that the contact in the low beam switch in the steering column is messed up, as that seems to be the only place the wires from the two lights are connected.

So basically, I need to know what to do now. How do I get this switch off, and attempt to fix the contact? I tried to unscrew some parts of the column and take off the cover, but that didn't prove easy with the wheel in the way. Should I take off the wheel? I don't want to set off the airbag, or be unable to get it back on. I haven't gone to the local Honda dealership yet to ask (the guys in the parts department know me pretty well now though) because its the weekend, and I'll be damned if I take her to a mechanic of any sort for something like this, I really prefer to understand how my car works, and I don't want to spend a lot of money either.

Any other ideas? Is there somewhere else the problem may lie that I've missed? Does anyone know of some free diagrams I can use to make things a little easier?

Thanks for the time, and hopefully for the help.

 

Bump....?

 

Solved. It wasn't the switch at all (though I now know exactly how they work), it was actually the bulbs. A guy at a service department of the local Honda dealership said sometimes one bulb can burn out, causing a power surge that burns out the other at the same time. Uncommon, but not unheard of. So I bought some new lights and put them in.