My Drivers side headlight will sometimes not work, but....if I simply tap the lens it will ALWAYS come on. Sometimes it stays on for a long while, but sometimes not. If I recall correctly, it will not go back off until I shut down. The it will sometimes come on at the next start, but not always. I tried cleaning the contacts on the bulb, but it still does it. Anyone experience (and solve) a similar issue?

 

Shoot in the dark here, try changing out the bulb..

 

Try swapping the bulbs left to right and see if the problem follows the bulb. If the problem remains on the left side, start looking at the headlight connector and wiring harness.

 

Check the plug connection: 61132359991

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ght-issue.html

 

What year and what headlights are you running? If a headlight is out, sometimes back in the old days, it was just a matter of hitting the dang thing to make the filaments connect again, temporarily. If you have HID or something like that, could be a bad ballast. My HID's were acting up a while ago, I swapped the bulbs and ballasts side to side, one part at a time, and no issues now. Maybe just a bad connection?

 

Had the exact same issue a couple of years ago, driver's side not working, tap on the headlight it'd come back on but after a while it's out again. Turned out to be a build up of corrosion on the contacts inside of the plug attached to the wiring harness. Cleaned it up and sprayed some contact cleaner on it with anti-corrosion properties and hadn't had a problem since.

 

did connector cleaning solve the problem?

standard halogen?

have you always owned this car or bought used?

does it have now, and always had only "basic bulbs"?

I've had a couple of cars brought to me where the basic halogen lights were either acting weird like you see or simply would not come on at all. In each case bulbs had been replaced with something brighter which translated into hotter ...

If you check around INSIDE the light housing you see there is an internal bunch of wires that go from the connector socket to the various bulb sockets. In these cases I found that the insulation of some of these wires was completely gone - cooked off, what was left was discolored and brittle - and exposed wires were touching each other causing shorts ... and as the car bounced sometimes things turned on and off.

I could find no way to easily fix this problem (these wires are not a seperate part) and after taking the cars to a couple of independent MINI shops (second and third opinions I recommended owners seek out) the final result was always buy new housings .....

First time I saw this one side was completely out and bulb swap confirmed the bulbs were good. Once I found the cooked wires on the bad side I checked the good. Wires on the good side where also cooked and insulation fell away as I touched them . . .

It's something to check ..... I've never seen this on a car that stuck with 'plain bulbs', nor experienced myself running 'silverstar' bulbs .... other HOT bulbs????