How to Replace Headlight Switch 1994-2002 Dodge Ram 1500

Hey, friends. It's Len here at 1A Auto. Today, we're going to be working on our 1996 Dodge Ram 1500. I want to show you something fairly basic, removing and reinstalling a headlight switch. Super easy. I can do it. You can do it too. As always, if you need any parts, check us out at 1AAuto.com. Thanks. Okay, friends, so we're inside the vehicle. We have a clear view of our dash plate here. You can give it a little tug. The majority of it will break free, just like that. Okay. But you'll notice as you get along to this side, it seems like it's kind of stuck in there, isn't it? It's not that big of a deal. Just grab this, pull it out of here. You're going to notice you have a Phillips-head and a Phillips-head. We'll remove those, one, two. Both of those are the same. Put those where we can't lose them. Pull this right out of here.

There's going to be a couple more screws up here. These ones are a little bit harder to get to but can be done. Same as the others. There's one on this side, of course. Just going to pull out this whole unit here. It's our little cup holder tray. Awesome. All right, so now we're just going to run our fingers along the side. Awesome. Pardon the noise. Get that out of the way. This should lift right up. Awesome. Just got a little bit of wiring here. Just disconnect that one. So now we'll just take this off. Just grab this little tab and this little tab. Come on, baby. I lift one, the other one goes under. Okay. There's that. Awesome. Let's get this out of the way.

Okay, friends, now that we have the dash faceplate off, we can clearly see the headlight switch. There's three mounting screws, one, two, three. We're going to remove those with our Phillips-head. That's what our screw looks like. So we're getting that off of there. All right, so here's our headlights switch. That's a biggie. When you pull it out it jazzes up all these wires. Awesome.

I'll set these mounting screws aside. Take a look at this. We'll see how to disconnect it. Lift up on that right there. Okay, and going to be another one right there. It's pretty common when you go to do one side, the other side will pop in and then vice versa. If you just use a pocket screwdriver, generally speaking, it will be helpful to you. Of course, we don't want to try to break any of these ears off so you might get a little bit perturbed and you might start pulling a little hard. But just be careful because the objective isn't necessarily to break anything. Maybe it is, I don't know what you're thinking about. So we'll get that off of there. Get this one off there. And there's our headlights switch. Awesome.

So we'll just take a peek at our electrical connections. Make sure you don't see any funny colors in there, any greens, blues, oranges, reds, well, pretty much any color, but metal isn't good for electrical connections. So those look good. We're going to take our headlight switch, whether it's new or old, whatever it doesn't matter, plug it in. There we are. Going to do this part. It's just going to come around. See if I can get it to spin this way. Cool. You can tell which way it goes because you've got this prong right here, it kind of goes the opposite way than the majority of them. That's right up here, right? You got one like and one right there. That's those two. And then the other ones are all pretty much just up and down, so slide it in. This is going to connect in there. That's going to latch in right there. It's going to hold it in nice and tight. There we go. Give it a nice tug. Let's see if works. Awesome. Here we go.

Get that in where it belongs. We'll grab our three mounting screws. We'll just start him in. We're not going to tighten anything down till we have them all started in. Okay. All three are started. Snug them up. Cool. All right, so it's time to get our faceplate on. I'm just going to go right over here. Just bring it down. We'll rest it there for a second. Come right over here. We'll connect this in. It's very basic. You just line it up, give it a squeeze and it locks right in. We've got this one, going to go right like that. That slides in. Easy peasy. Take the faceplate, carefully line it up with where it belongs. It looks pretty great. Give it a loving bonk. Love it. Let's get a couple screws in and we can move along.

All right, so let's get this in here. Just going to slide it in. Theoretically, it should just want to go in there. Two mounting screws. All right. We'll grab out, some people call it an ashtray, it's more of a change tray for me, but everybody's got their thing. Awesome. All right. So we've got our cup holder. You got the little tab right here. That tab has to go under this right here. So as you slide this in, you just pay attention to the bottom. That looks pretty good. It looks as though the screw holes are lined up. That's great. Oops, they were lined up. Try again. Just going to get it in there. Get that one started. Do this one over here. Both are started. Let's snug them up. Awesome.

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