'95 lh: all interior lights and headlights stay on

Question

I have a 1995 Chrysler Concorde 3.2L. A few months ago the radio lost FM and still had AM no problem. Then the interior lights would not go off when you left the vehical.(killed battery).I removed all bulbs and the fuse for lights. That killed radio. Now the headlights stayed on all night and killed battery again...Where do I start looking?

Answer

Hi Ken, The first lighting problem (interior lights staying on) is most likely due to one of the door mounted switches that turn on the lights when you open the door is falsely telling the interior light circuit that you opened the door. I suspect the driver side door switch is the problem and it usually is due to the latch being too loose to secure the door tightly. The fix is to mover the striker in the door post proper inboard a few mm to more tightly secure the door in the door frame. Then try putting back the fuses and bulbs. It could be anyone of the 4 doors, so you could also put the fuses and at least one bulb back in, and then try pushing inward on all four doors till you find the one that is too loosely latched. The secont lighting problem (the headlights staying on) is probably due to a worn out hi/lo/optical horn switch on the steering column which is falsely lighting the lamps because it is behaing as if you are holding the optical horn spring-loaded position "on" when you really are not doing that. You could check that by removing that switch from the steering column and testing to see if you are getting 12v on pin 4 of the switch when it is at rest (assuming that the lights are still staying on) and that would confirm that the switch has failed in the closed condition and that therefor your brights will be on all the time. That is about the only way for that to happen if your headlamp switch is truly off, which could also be at fault and that would be found by checking to see if you have voltage on pin 2 of the dimmer switch even thought the headlamp switch is off. If you do then the headlamp switch has failed in the 'on' position. The radio is probably an internal problem with it. Please 'rate' my answer (see below). Thanks, Roland Roland