Headlights stay on after shutdown (cold weather) -33'C

Every year this happens to my truck, go shut it off and notice when I walk by that the headlights never shut off. Now if I just walk away and not notice then they will stay on and drain the battery over time. Otherwise i'll have to manually turn them off. Anyone else ever find a solution for this??

 

I never realized they turned themselves off. Cool. I assumed you have to have DRLs for that to happen.

 

Solution; turn them off

 

possibly a canada feature but still a pain in the but.....and steves104x4 your solution works but if my truck has a feature them it seems wise to use that feature

 

A troublesome headlight relay??? Track it down, pull the relay the next time its -30° C - and - see what happens.

 

Mine shut off and I have a Canadian Tacoma. Yes they stay on for 20-30 seconds after I turn on the truck but then they shut off after that.

Tacoma's have manual lights. There isn't a sensor on the 2nd gen Tacoma to tell it to automatically turn on or off the lights for the driving conditions like there is on basically every other truck. If you want them off instantly or when it's running, you have to do it yourself.

 

Funny, I always leave mine on and they go on an off with the ignition. But yesterday I went out in 30 degree weather to to put some air in my tires. Fired up the truck, plugged in my 12V air compressor, filled all 4 tires, then shut off the truck. Locked it via the fob, walked away.

About an hour later I looked out the window and noticed the lights were on. Went out and turned them off via off the switch. All I can think of is that because the truck never moved nor was put in gear the thing thought I wanted them left on. Odd.

 

Do you know which one is the replay for the lights?


Also mine shut off once the driver door opens and the truck is off

 

I just checked, my truck does turn off the lights with the key if you left them on. Appears to be a feature to prevent running your battery down just as you've mentioned.

Looking through the FSM wiring diagram it looks like the ECU actually controls the relay, so it must have a decision tree that if you have the headlight switch on when the key is turned off it turns off the headlights. I was able to rotate the switch with no key in the ignition and they turned on and off like normal. So it must only be a one time thing when the headlights are on and you turn the key off.

Could be the relay like @OldandSlow mentions, sticking. But might be something in the ECU doesn't like cold, maybe there's a current sensing circuit that they use and is just at the lower threshold when it's cold. Don't have a solution other than what @Steves104x4 says.

 

This is normal. Even the radio works until you open the doors. It's the same way on all of my trucks. Nothing shuts off until the doors are open. I've even had a 3rd party remote start that used to kill the battery doing this because it would only run for 8 minutes. After that the lights and radio stayed on until the truck was dead, so if I started the truck too soon it would run out of batts before I went outside.

 

Same here. Door open and lights out!

 

Actually, you know what... when i ran into this yesterday I shut the truck off from the passenger seat and got out the passenger side... so I never opened/closed the driver's side door. I bet that's why mine stayed on.

 

if you cannot resolve it I'd check door switch