Okay, so my fog lights started working intermittently sunday night. Noticed they cut out, the light on the dash turned off, but the switch was still out. Pop the switch in, pull it back out, and they came back on again..... for about 10 secs. I powered 'em down and left them off for the rest of the way home.

Monday I pulled out the bulbs, filament in one was broken, other looked okay. Picked up two new bulbs and put them in, and they still won't turn on. Checked the fuses, they're all good. Went to about 8 auto parts stores trying to find a relay, switched that out and they still don't come on.

All the wiring looks good, nothing I can see is frayed or broken, just a little dirt buildup on them. Last thing I can think of is the switch itself. The light in the knob hasn't worked since I've had the truck, but the switch has been reliable (so far). I haven't yanked the fuse and checked voltage over that with the switch on, but I don't know if that'll tell me anything. I'd rather not yank the switch out, since that's a fair amount of work getting the dash apart again. Is there anything else I can check?

Maybe they work but really flipping dim?
You said you checked the wiring. Did you mean you 'OHMed' it? or continuity checked it?

Maybe they work but really flipping dim?
You said you checked the wiring. Did you mean you 'OHMed' it? or continuity checked it?

No, not dim. Off completely.

And by "check", i mean visual inspection.

ouch. Not knowing the complete circuitry, I can dream up a lot of ways of why this sucker is turning off. To me, only a multi meter is useful here to find that open circuit.

Yeah, I have one of those. I just don't know enough about vehicle electric systems to know what else to troubleshoot.

With fogs on but ignition off...remove fog fuse and just use meter in OHM to see if said circuit is opened. Maybe a 'buttsplice' hiding somewhere.

Was informed by a fellow bull rider that it could be the ground wire.

/me sets multimeter and toolbox next to door
I will check this tomorrow when it's light out.

any luck?

nope, all the lines appear to be good.... see, rather than having one +12v switched line going to the lights and grounding to the chassis, they run both +V and Gnd together, up into a main trunk line that goes into the relay/fuse block. The wiring between the T off the trunk and the lamps themselves are good, the loop between the T and the relay look good...

dunno, something's still telling me it's a switch.

So I poked around a little more today, washed my truck and tore apart the dash and removed the switch assembly. There's two connectors on the switch, one's a pair and the other's a 14ish-pin connector. I'm assuming the pair connector is for fogs, since the fogs are optional and the connector is on the fog-switch side of hte switch. There's a constant 12v over that connector, regardless of fog/dash/headlight illumination. I pulled the entire switch assembly out, there's a PCB with roller contacts (that happen to be spring-loaded, chased those around for a while) that looked to be a bit corroded, but other than that everything was rotating and appared to be operating properly. Cleaned the contacts off, cleaned the roller bearings, wiped everything off and re-greased them (yay for silicon vacuum grease!) and everything but fog lights work. Did some voltage/resistance checks between fog relay and switch, *nothing* seems to connect there. There's two pins on the headlight relay that open and close when the headlights are on and off, and since the relays are the same, I checked hte same two pins on the fogs and they didn't open/close (Stayed at 0v, ∞Ω).

So... The questions I have for you kids... What's a good place to go to find pinouts for the 14ish-pin connector (and possibly the 2-pin) on the switch assembly; and where's a good place to go for replacement parts? The light inside the knob hasn't worked since I got the truck, and I'm thinking if it's not too expensive I may replace the whole assembly anyways. I may stop by a library and see if they have a chiltons manual I can copy a few pages fromf
cv.

this could mean absolutely nothing, but if this is factory fogs, they work in conjunction with the headlight switch. switching to high beams switches off the fogs.

90% of the problems I've seen with fog lights are caused by a bad switch. 9% are bad grounds and 1% are stolen by a minority (like sntp)

THe MPV had one dead fog and it was caused by a burnt out wire. spilced the fucker.

yeah, my gut is still telling me it's the switch. So where can I go to find a switch for cheap?

It's for a '99 Ram 1500..... There's a junkyard nearby I may head to some weekend, see if they have anything. I'd rather not go through dealer, they're fucking expensive.

just take one from the junkyard

junk yard or a forum

YES!
So I got teh switch in I ordered off eBay. Came from a wrecked 2001 Ram 2500. EVERYTHING WORKS! The normal stuff plus fogs, as well as the light in the knob itself!

Tore apart the old switch and there's a contactor in the back of the switch that apparently rattled loose and caused the switch to fail.

Case closed, finally.

Gratz!