I started thinking about something this morning.

When I drive the car at night, the instrument panel lights dim (been doing that for a while) and then last week the headlights started to flicker or even go off completely at times.

Car seems to start ok, but I did replace a four year old battery a few weeks back. The old battery looked swollen and wouldn't take a charge any more so I replaced it.

I had thought / assumed my light issue might be a light switch but then I started thinking about it....could this be an alternator problem?

I am going to trade out the light switch either way but should I also test the alternator?

Thinking a simple test would be to crank the car up then remove the negative battery cable and see if it still runs.....

 

if the lights are flickering its probably the switch getting hot . its cheap enough to replace plus it could have something to do with your dim dash lights since the resistor is on the headlight switch. also you can replace the voltage regulator on the back of the guages and lights who knows how old they are, as lights age they also dim


do not remove the battery cable from the alt while the car is running it makes the alt go full load and over heat and you can end up with a bad alternator just run it buy the parts store and let them test it on the car

 

Or just check to see how many volts you are getting at the battery with the lights on if its at about 14 you are ok. Mine does the same thing and I believe it to be the regulator..