so last night the wife and i took the Hakosuka for a drive to pick up some stuff she bought from a local forum, and while i waited in the car, i decided to flip the lights to high to see how the looked, and BAM no headlights at all.. i was like uh......

popped the hood. checked the wiring, everything looked ok. unhooked the battery, hooked it back up. tried my best to check the harness under the dash, nothing seemed loose, and nothing smelled burnt.

wife walked out and asked why the hood was up. as i dropped the hood back down BAM on came the lights.. WTF??

i didn't dare switch to brights as it was really dark and would have been a difficult drive with no lights.
as we got closer to home i caught a bright flash under the dash and they went out again. OK... something HAS to be loose. the lights came back on in a few minutes, and all was ok.

tonight i started tinkering with it. pulled the column apart, turned on the lights NOTHING. just the parking lights. wiggled the stalk to see if the switch might be going out, but nothing seemed to change.
unhooked some harnesses and re-hoooked them to see if they came on. but nothing seemed to work.

the lights eventually came on, but went right back out when i switched to brights.

this is a piss poor post and I'm sorry, but has anyone else had problems with their headlights being intermittent like this? any ideas? fuses are good, all the plugs seem ok, not sure WTF flashed under the dash, but as of 10 minutes ago i have tail lights, and running lights, but NO headlights at all now, UNTIL i tug on the flasher stalk. when i do that i still get BOTH high and low beams to come on. how does THAT make any sense?

The relays for the hi and low beam are in the engine bay, they are 2 metal boxes on the passenger side near the front (sorta to the left of the radiator).

There are a zillion wires going in and out, but they actually earth through the metal casings of the relays against the bodywork. Before you get too radical taking things apart, I'd remove the relays and clean them up where they contact the body. It wouldn't hurt to sand away a clean spot at the contact point, either.

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no kidding.. i moved those to re-locate my fuel pump, and one of those is probably just barely grounding to the chassis.

i will take a look tomorrow, its 9:30 PM now lol.

Thank you so much Kev!

well i think that was the culprit, a couple of the relays were a little loose, now they have been re-relocated and all make good contact with the chassis, and voila they came right on.