Dave;

"87" has the best idea of what to check! First make certain the lamp come from its seat, or hasn't been other wise been dislodged...also, sometimes, as lamps get old, they start plating carbon or bits of the filament onto the inside of their envelope further decreasing their light output (if that's the case replace lamp)...so just pull the lamp out, inspect and clean it...you MIGHT be able to find a higher wattage lamp to go with those "barnburner" lamps you're running.

John Mc also has it right...even when the headlights are OFF, and you momentarilly use the directional signal stalk for signaling, the momentary function ALWAYS energizes the brights, but since the mechanism of the bytable latching relay is a see-saw arrangement, see:



...upon release, it will now fall to the other state, so that if you turn on your headlight switch latter, they can come up in either state...but totally predictable (depending on what state they were in when you last turned them OFF, and if you used the momentary signal an even or odd number of times). The point is... after turning ON headlights, just check the (fixed) indicator briefly, and as necessary switch to low beam.

Cheers