Headlight circuit breaker?

[olgraybeard]

After about 1 hour of running time my 63 Econoline pickup headlights start blinking does this have a circuit breaker (where is it located).

[BPVan]

AFAIK there is no circuit breaker, just a fuse on the back of the switch. Is it consistently an hour? What is the frequency of the blink? Here is a shot of the 67 shop manual wiring, I don't think much changed from 63:

[Luva65wagon]

My guess would be a failing switch. If the contacts are getting hot the switch may be thermo-cycling where the contact gets so hot it pulls away, cools, reconnects, gets hot, pulls away, cools, reconnects, so on and so forth.

The switch itself may have a thermal cutout built-in for this heat stress issue. They are not fused (usually) and it may have been their way of keeping the switch from just melting down. Would have to open one up. I have about five or six used '65 switches. May just pry one open and see what's inside one of them. It'll be close to yours in design.

Of course, I don't know any of this for sure. Just 'pothesisizing.

[Luva65wagon]

AFAIK there is no circuit breaker, just a fuse on the back of the switch. Is it consistently an hour? What is the frequency of the blink? Here is a shot of the 67 shop manual wiring, I don't think much changed from 63:

So the 67 had fuses on it like the 63 Falcon did? Them crazy Ford guys.

These fuses were not to fuse the headlight circuit, for what it's worth. These were taking the juice that was sent to the headlight switch directly from the battery and then fusing it before going to other items; like the turn signals and flashers (as shown in the diagram) or whatever else they fed. The headlight switch feed was not fused as best as I can tell. Lots of wiring in a Falcon is ripe for shorting out. We should all add a fusible link or two under the hood. Hum... sounds like a tech article in the making.

[olgraybeard]

Looked at my shop manual for a 63. The fuses are not for the headlights but there is a circuit breaker built into the switch. It doesn't give any more details than that. Lucky it usually doesn't start blinking until a block from work. If it gets worse (I know it will) I'll put in a universal light switch and a fuse block with a plug in circuit breaker for headlight and fuses for the rest.

[SmithKid]

Didn't see this thread until now. Yes, the headlight switch has a circuit breaker inside (not sure if all years). I once had a '60 Ranchero I used for carrying dirt bikes to/from Mattawa that had the switch start blinking while descending Snoqualmie Pass on the W side at 70 mph (very exciting). Found that this only occurred when on HI beam so made it down safely and traded the switch out the next day & all was well again for the next week-end trip.