Hello again fellow members - getting near time to get the little wedge out once more... Not sure if anyone can help here, but here goes. Finally got round to headlight switch burnout a couple of years ago on my 87 1500. Early autumn frost put paid to all those years of not having the issue. Since then I think am now on my third switch, yet at time of writing the latest only works the sidelights... I probably need the red / brown upgrades too. But can anyone put me in the right direction of somebody to sort this, preferably Sheffield or Hull based, though will gladly travel further afield within reason. Have great mechanic here, though reckon auto electrician with experience of the car and it's foibles is probably what I need. Last time I got another switch put in I was told the wiring had previously been relayed. Many thanks for help you can give. Think my car's overall in great nick - drove it home to Turin last year without a hiccup, and stayed at the old Fiat plant, but this issue has become an annual pain. Cheers. Glenn.

These late switches are notoriously fragile. Here is a link where someone in the USA swapped there late switch for an early rocker style one and gives instructions and pics. They are apparently much better.
I have an early switch for beer money if you find an electrician to do it or fancy doing it yourself.

http://xwebforums.org/showthread.php?t=6236&highlight=Headlight+switch

The switches are only fragile if there is another underlying issue!

These are the same switches as the classic Panda's, typical cause of failure it build up for resistance due to poor earthing or ageing wiring. Not rectifying this issue can potentially eventually lead to a fire, as the switches fails due to over heating - the switch is the weakest point, beef it up and it'll be the wiring which will fail next!!

On the Classic Panda's the best method of repair is rewiring the headlamp circuits with an additional new relayed headlamp loom which piggy banks off of the OEM wiring

Dodgy wiring may well be the cause in this case. I didn't say it wasn't. I stand by what I said that the early rocker style switch is more resilient.
I owned a 79 x19 for 10 years, it was my daily driver for three of those years and when I sold it with 120000 miles on the clock, I'd never had a problem with the headlight switch, nor did a mate who had the same year x19.

If you look on xweb, there is page after page of people complaining about problems with there late slide type headlight switch, you just don't see that with the early style rocker switch.

I don't see people with early X19's taking apart their electrics to wire in a late slide type switch!

Thanks for advice thus far. I always smirked with the fact of never having headlamp issues of any sort, until the day the frost got in some how. Now it just seems an annual event. Think I bought one of the old type switches, so will try to locate it first. Does seem like I'm fighting the tide though, as it seems the poor little old fiat wires simply degenerate over time...

The headlight motors already use relays from the factory installed in the dash do they not?

So that leaves the Brown wire mod which I haven't done yet.

The 'red wire mod' i presume is the live for the headlights as dipped beam did'nt have a relay. I made two little looms up myself out of the car which simply plugs in to the original headlight plug and bolts onto the battery live.

http://www.network54.com/Forum/12159/message/1157943183/New+headlight+wire+mod+for+all+X19's---
unfortunately the images have dropped off for the time being... including the nice and simple circuit diagram.

Could it be that the load from the headlights rather than the motors is whats killing the switches? I know my headlight stalk is sticky from years of taking the full current of the headlights.

the main reason I addressed this on my car was that the dipped headlights were like candles!