Ok, I'll try to keep this short. 82TA, when I got the car 3 years ago both headlights worked fine. One day about a year ago the left headlight stoped going up. If you manually put it up (by turning the little ****) then turned it off it would go down by itself. To see if the relay was the problem I took teh relay off the right side (since it worked fine) and it still didnt work. I took the left relay and put it on the right, worked fine. Ok, the relays are fine. I cleaned all the connections on the relays etc and still no luck. Since I had to go through inspecion I just unplugged both sides and manually put both lights up and thats how they have been. Is there some control box for the headlight retrators or something that has gone bad? Everything at the headlights them selves (relays, motors, etc) all seem to be in working condition. Any help would be greatly appreciated, driving with the lights stuck up and not on looks really stupid.

 

might be your headlight switch dude...my red 82 t/a in the sig did that same thing...sometimes one would go up..and the other wouldnt...then the other would go up...vice versa...try a new headlight switch...ive got a few good spare headlight switches if you want one... for the 82-84's

 

More commonly Its not the switch, Each headlight motor has a little box relay on the side of it, I have learned that these tend to go out quite easily, and can be replaced to normally cure the problem. hope this helps

 

Read my response in this thread
https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...threadid=73250

 

I just recently had trouble with my 82 T/A headlights, sometimes they would not go up or turn on, they would turn on and not go up, other times they would go up and all of a sudden just shut off while I was driving.. turned out to be the switch..

If you decide to replace it and want to go new, year one next generation sells switches for newer birds that will fit, all you need to do is pull the guts off the newer model trim plate and plug it into your older dash, newer trim plates with the same old swithes..

 

doin that makes no sense...thats alot of uselesss work...and why take away from the 82-84 transam guage style? imho there the best gauge style the 3rd gens ever had. except for the crappy 85 mph speedo hehe

 

MarkB, I don't think you are understanding me, using newer switches does nothing to the appearance of the 82 dash (which I also think is the best).

The switchgear is plug and play. You simply unplug the newer switches from the newer model trimplate that they are packaged with new, unplug the old non-functional switches from the old dash and trade them out.. If you have switches lying about you can see where they plug into the trim plate.. old 82 style switches are no longer made new which is why when I needed new switches I had to get a later model set from year one, unplug it and throw away the different style trim plate that is included, plug them into my dash, put my old trim plate on and viola! new switches.

All fbody dashes are the same behind the trimplates. You can even take newer style gauges and put them behind the 82 trimplates if you want.

the only appearance difference is that when they are in an 82 dash the dimmer switch is a light grey instead of black and the headlight switch also has one grey button.

If you look at the link in the first pic you can just barely see the grey dimmer switch on my dash.https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...hreadid=144351