intermittent headlights on low beam

[chiguy]

Someone just told me this past week I had a headlight out. That seemed strange as I just put in new Silverstars in a few months ago. I picked up a new replacement bulb and when I went to replace the bulb that was out, I found the other headlight was out also. This seemed suspicious. Both headlights worked on high beam. So, I tried wiggling connectors, and then I took one of the bulbs out and checked it. It looked fine. After putting everything back together, I finally just tried a good whack with my hand on the front of the headlight. It came on. Then I tried the same on the other side, and it came on. I'm sure this means they'll quit again soon and I'll constantly be having to whack them to get them to come on. Anyone know what the culprit is that a good whack is, at least temporarily, fixing? FWIW, car is a 95 Surbaru Legacy with 196k miles.

[porcupine73]

How do the connectors for the lights look? Mine were a little corroded. If you gave it a good smack and they started working it's almost certainly a connector issue, i'd try again jiggling all the wires back there and playing with and checking the connectors.

 

If it's doing it on both lights it probably isn't this issue I had before where someone told me a light was out and I checked it and it was OK then later I got pulled over for having a light out so I took out the light and it turned out the filament was broken but was still laying on the post in there so it worked some of the time.

[Olnick]

Common problem. Lotsa' heat there and the plastic socket gets fried and disintegrates. Relatively easy fix to solder in a new generic socket.

 

Search turns up a lot of discussion. This link might help:

http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=41301&highlight=headlight+socket