Headlight switch glitch

[cheetoduster]

Earlier today parked like normal in the parking garage and shut her down. I started getting the "door ajar" chime so I'm looking around to see if I'd left anything on or forgot to put it in park or whatever the hell else could be going on. The dash was backlit but only displaying the odo, PRNDM, all that. I opened the door and it stayed on, the chime continued. I closed the door and locked the doors, the dash stayed backlit and the headlights were still on. I waited a bit and they never cut off.

I got back in and started it back up to see what was going on. I'm looking at the headlight switch thinking "damn you Ford for making this so hard to see in the dark" and I got a flash light out. I turned the knob (it was on auto) and it didn't occur to me until I saw it light up that the switch hadn't been illuminated like it should be. I put it back on auto and shutting down and locking her up all went as normal. I went out again a little bit ago and while driving through the garage I noticed the fog lights weren't on, which they always are.. It's like the while switch reset itself when it malfunctioned.

 

[Cdubya]

I've had the headlight switch malfunction 3 times in the past 2 years. I keep a trim tool in my car so I can pop the switch out and disconnect it. After I reconnect it, it's fine. If it happens more often than it does, I'm going to replace it. Not that expensive.

For me, the switch no longer illuminates, headlights will be on all the time, including after the car is turned off!

 

[GomerPyleST]

On the 2025 Explorer ST the headlight switch defaults to auto every time you turn off the car and restart it. I just picked mine up on Monday September 30th and I had one glitch yesterday where my electronics went all crazy no lights or anything and dash and infotainment were dark but everything was buzzing etc... it then stopped and I so I started it up as I was afraid something was messed up. After starting it all was normal except in the instrument cluster I lost two of the pages I had. I lost the driver assistant page and the temp page. I re-added them by re-checking the mark and so far have not have another problem when driving this morning. However I read that the dash could go wonky if the battery was low, so today I decided to hook up my NCCO Genius 5 Battery charger/maintainer and it seems the battery was not fully charged as it stayed on the orange indicator for about an hour. It finally went to green and is now on pulsing green meaning it is being maintained. I'm hoping this will fix any gremlins I might of had have. So long story short maybe check your battery and see it it needs a bit of charging. When I hooked up my volt meter before charging mine it read like 12 something volts but I thought these AGM's were supposed to be more like 13 to 14 volts at least that's what the Optima Yellow top AGM battery in my old car was. Anyway just trying to be helpful, good luck!