97 GC Electrical HELP HELP HELP!!!!!

[powerbyte]

Hey everyone,
I'm new here and I hope someone can help me. I have a 97 GC SE with 143,000 miles on it. It is about to go in for a clockspring replacement next week, but before that gets taken care of I need to figure out the problem with our headlight.
Last week during a rainstorm, my wife had left the windows on our van open. The next day the power locks started to open and close by themselves whenever you opened the door. This was followed by fluky behavior by the wipers (but they do a swipe every now and then anyway), and now the headlights stay on for about 2 minutes whenever you open the door, which is causing the battery to die every couple of hours. The headlight switch has no effect on this. When you are driving the car, the headlights stay on and you cannot turn them off witht he switch.
I was told by two different mechanics that I was doing telephone workl for that I should have the BCM replaced. Dodge wants $655 for it, and to me that is ridculous, especially for a part that cannot be returned if that doesn't do the trick. Does ANYONE have any other suggestions?
I also have the keyless entry with alarm on the van, and was wondering if there is any way to disable that feature in case that is the trouble.

Thanks in advance,
Robert

[powerbyte]

Got the headlight switch out, and the lights went out completely (interior and headlights). The switch was badly corroded inside, so maybe this is the issue. new switch will be in Thursday! Wish me luck!!

[TomQuick]

I would have gone with the switch as well. I was having some issues with the lights on my '97 se sometimes going out when I was driving, and other times they were just really hard to turn on. A new switch fixed it right up, and was less than $70.

I also have the occasional automatic wiper swipe happening. It seems to happen most often after signaling, and taking a left turn on my van. Because of that, I tend to think that it is most likely a problem with the switch it's self, not the BCM, but since it doesn't happen a lot, and they always work when I turn them on, I'm not worried about it right now.

I don't know if you'll run into this or not, but I recently replaced both of the electrical connectors (sockets) for my headlights. First the drivers side light got very dim. Wiggling the wiring harness behind the light around a bit would get it working again for a while. I suspected that it was a problem with the ground wire, as it was affecting both the low, and high beams. When I finally got around to looking at it, the ground connection in the socket had started to melt, and burn up, so I replaced it. About a month and a half later, the same thing started happening to the other headlight, and of course it had the same exact problem.