CORRECTION: I have re-fixed the headlight situation. It was, after all, the switch ... sort of. The plug got fried when the first switch destroyed itself, and apparently it left some nasty corrosion of sorts on the top-center terminal. When I poked on the new switch 6 months ago, apparently that corrosion transferred onto the top-center terminal (which went to the brown/white wire for the dimmer switch/parking lamp circuit).
I wound up snipping off the plug and putting new spade terminal ends on all 8 wires (6 spade connectors, two terminals have two wires each sharing them), and then scraping the fuzzy crud off the top-center terminal of the headlamp switch. I taped around each of them so that they would be protected from contacting one another and shorting out. After a bit of farting around in trying to make those damned spade connectors all plug into the headlamp switch all the way (tried taping them together to make my own ghetto-rigged "plug" but they would never all line up right) and wishing they'd made the wires to the switch plug about 4" longer, I finally got everything plugged into place and, lo and behold, it's got working headlamps, parking lights, and dash lights, again.
Soooooo, if any of y'all are having this same problem with the dashlights and parking lamps both going out, you might wanna take a look at the terminals on the back of your switch and inside of your headlamp switch plug before buying a new switch or anything. Maybe take a needle or small flathead screwdriver and scrape the stuff out and/or hose it with some contact cleaner. I'd imagine that this is probably a somewhat common occurrance, if this is what happens when a switch shorts out and fries the connector.
I wound up snipping off the plug and putting new spade terminal ends on all 8 wires (6 spade connectors, two terminals have two wires each sharing them), and then scraping the fuzzy crud off the top-center terminal of the headlamp switch. I taped around each of them so that they would be protected from contacting one another and shorting out. After a bit of farting around in trying to make those damned spade connectors all plug into the headlamp switch all the way (tried taping them together to make my own ghetto-rigged "plug" but they would never all line up right) and wishing they'd made the wires to the switch plug about 4" longer, I finally got everything plugged into place and, lo and behold, it's got working headlamps, parking lights, and dash lights, again.
Soooooo, if any of y'all are having this same problem with the dashlights and parking lamps both going out, you might wanna take a look at the terminals on the back of your switch and inside of your headlamp switch plug before buying a new switch or anything. Maybe take a needle or small flathead screwdriver and scrape the stuff out and/or hose it with some contact cleaner. I'd imagine that this is probably a somewhat common occurrance, if this is what happens when a switch shorts out and fries the connector.