GenVibe - Community for Pontiac Vibe Enthusiasts

I was driving around a couple evenings ago and realized I had no headlights... I thought it was strange that both would go at once, so i got under the hood and investigated the fuses. I tried changing out any headlight related ones with no luck.

Then I decided to try the high beams just for the heck of it, and they both work fine...

So i suppose its possible that both of my headlight bulbs lost their low beam functionality at exactly the same time, but that seems unlikely.

After reading the few items on the net related to this, I'm suspecting the switch itself, or possibly the DRL (daytime running lights) module? Any more insight on this one?

Factory troubleshooting guide for lights here: http://madstyle1972.com/Repair/65/2009d/pstr4000.pdf

Your going to need a volt meter to track down this problem, as it could be anything. Could it be possible that one light has been out and now that the other one has stopped working, you have just notice it now. A odd thing in the past that I had was that the headlight sockets went bad on a mini van. Power at the wire but no voltage out the socket. I had the get replacement sockets at the parts store, solider them in, and shrink tube them.

Well, nevermind...

Turns out the low beam on both bulbs must have been bad. I bought one new lightbulb and put it in at lunch just to see, and it works.

I looked at the old bulbs carefully to see if the filament was toasted, and it looks fine, so i guess visual inspection is not good enough.

I posted this almost verbatim on a Honda CR-V forum a few days ago, as the exact same thing happened to my wife's 2012 CR-V last weekend. We were out of town, checked into our hotel and then an hour or so later headed out for dinner. Fog lights were on but no headlights. High beams worked fine (to the annoyance of several other drivers, unfortunately), and the next day I confirmed that the DRL worked too.

Checked the HL low beam fuses and both were good, then found that both bulb low beam elements had blown. Bought a new set at the local NAPA and all is well again. My guess is that one bulb blew and maybe caused a surge that blew the other one as well. Or, since I replace them in pairs, they just happened to go at the same time. I did find out that the DRL's use the high-beam element at a lower voltage, so that's good to know. The CR-V and Vibe both use 9003 bulbs, so maybe they both operate the same way.

On the first gen Vibes, the half bright and full low beams use the same filament, high beams use the other filament. The DRL module provides either a solid ground (for full low beam) or something else (for half bright low beam). I've never had a high beam filament go bad on me, but I've had a lot of low beam filaments go bad, most of the time with nothing noticeably wrong when looking at the filament. Sometimes I've had just one go, sometimes both seemingly at the same time, but I can't always be sure that maybe one went first and I just didn't notice. I've also found that any Sylvania brand bulb I've ever used had a shorter life than I expected, and I try hard to not use them.

Once I got caught far from stores in the middle of the night with both headlights dead, ended up putting a strip of duct tape over half the headlights and ran with the high beams on. Now I always carry at least one spare (and some duct tape )