Need headlight help

I have an 86 wagoneer with a major problem with the headlights, THEY DONT WORK. when you pull them on the left turnsignal indicator lights steady and so does the high beam indicator, and when i turn on the turnsignal the high beam indicator blinks.

I'm looking for some help if anyone has encountered this before or if you have wiring diagrams for the headlights and tail lights for an 86er. please Help

My guess if one of two things, a bad headlight switch or a bad dimmer switch. With the age of your vehicle changing them would be good.

I had my head light switch fail a week after I installed a new ignition switch. It would of been very little effort to do the headlight switch while i was at it.

The new switch I had to buy 200 miles from home at 7 pm one night was less than $15. I installed it in an hour or so in the parking lot of the store.

You also may want to check your grounds. I hope our XJs are similar when it comes to headlight wiring. Look on the driver's fender in the engine bay near the washer bottle. You should see a terminal attached to the fender with a screw. You may want to clean up the ground, even wire brush the paint off the fender and apply some Ox-gard made by GB. You can get it at any home center/hardware store in the electrial section. Reassemble and see if that helps. Maybe your ground screw fellout.

I would change the dimmer switch after I did the other things. It a a lot of work to get to the steering column. Also if you are chanigng the dimmer switch you might as well change the ignition switch, they use the same bolts. I am talking the switch NOT the lock cylinder.

Sorry to say replace stuff but I think you are to that point.

Another possibility in an XJ that old is a bad ground. The left turn indicator on my '88 MJ glows when the headlights are on, and I've narrowed it to a bad ground for the left front turn signal. All the lights in front go through a multi-contact connector behind the left headlight, beneath the air box. If the lights don't have a good ground, they try to find a ground anywhere they can, including back-feeding through other lights.

I suggest removing the air box (oops -- unless you have a 2.8L V-6), carefully undoing that connector, and cleaning up all the contacts. See if that helps.

i'd like to thank those who helped. As eagle stated the multi plug behind the left headlight was extremely corroded but not the problem. but from following the wires there i found a broken ground between the two sides right in the middle of the grill. Problem now fixed.

Thanks guys, your a life saver.