OK, I took the switch apart and found that the lower contact slide was melted and had a plastic "tail" that was preventing the switch from moving fully to the position to turn on the headlights. According to the wiring diagrams in the manual, on the 12-pin connector that plugs into the combination switch, the parking lights are on the gray/black wire (which on my wiring harness, is solid gray, not gray/black), and the headlights are on the yellow wire.

Now, I will verify these by using a test light when I take the assembly apart again, but looking at the way the switch is designed, when the lever is moved to the second position, to turn on the headlights, all it's doing is adding power to the contact that feeds the yellow headlight wire. What I'm going to do is tie the yellow headlight wire into the gray parking light wire, which effectively means that when the light lever is moved to the position that turns on the parking lights, it will also activate the headlights. The OEM fusing is all still in place - by tying these two wires together, I'm effectively making it so that the parking light switch position acts like the headlight switch position.

The switch won't allow me to turn on just the parking lights but I don't care - I don't ever use the lights that way. Since my switch functions fine in the parking light position, I'm just wiring it so that the functional parking light position allows the headlights to activate as well - essentially, I'm "removing" the parking lights position of the switch and have either lights off or lights on and that's it. That's fine by me for the time being, while I wait for a new switch to arrive. Then, when my new combi switch gets here, I can install it and delete the jumper. At least this way, I can use the car at night. I'll get pics of it in case anyone else is in a position like I am, where no matter what, you're gonna have to wait to get your part. A lot of people here have a variety of sources for these parts and can get them whenever they want, but I doubt I'm the only one who hasn't got those options and has to wait for parts for days at a time. So, this mod will be for us

 

OK, first off, no pics to post right now - the camera is acting up so I have to charge it back up before I can pull the pics but I will add them later tonight. But, I did manage to fix the headlight problem with a jumper.

When I took apart my headlight switch, the lower contact slide piece was melted and there was a plastic "tail" sticking off the left side, which prevented the contact to slide fully to the left of the switch and activate the low beams. I trimmed it off and sanded down the contacts so everything was good and shiny, reassembled everything, and tried it out - no luck. Took it back apart and messed with the slide some more but it was too far gone to salvage.

Now, the way the switch works is, when the lights are off, that lower contact is all the way to the right inside the housing (closest to the steering column). When the switch is moved up to the parking light position, the contact slides to the center of the switch and engages a contact which sends power to the parking lights. On the 12-pin connector that plugs into the switch, this power is sent out to the lights through a gray wire (my Bentley manual says it's black and gray, but my test light says it's the gray wire, and there is no black/gray wire in there). When the switch is moved again to the full up position to turn on the headlights, the contact inside slides to the left side of the switch housing, farthest away from the steering column). This allows it to maintain contact with the pad that activates the parking lights, and adds on a contact for the headlights. The current to the headlights is sent out through a solid yellow wire on the 12-pin connector.

What I did, since I had perfect functionality of the parking lights and no function on the headlights, was to use wiretaps on the gray wire and the yellow wire, and jumper them together inside the column. This way, when the parking lights are turned on, it also applies power to the yellow headlight wire and turns on the headlights. I can't run just parking lights alone anymore, but I don't care - I don't ever use that anyhow. Basically I've bypassed the faulty part of the switch and I have full headlight and foglight function now. I will replace the combination switch in time, but for now this works great as an interim fix. If anyone else has a headlight failure due to a melted switch contact, this is a way to get your car back into working order until you can get the new switch.

I'll post pics later on tonight showing where I tapped the wires that I used, so that anyone else can do this as well. The added benefit of this is that, since the wires were jumped right by the switch, all of the OEM fusing is maintained for circuit protection. Pics later - hope this helps someone else.