I have had the car since April and have had the TDS headlight repair kit since about a week after I bought the car. All sumrer long I put the job off and was working on the truck I just got rid of. Well since it's getting dark around here so earley now I wanted the lights fixed. Me and a buddy did it and it took us about 3.5 hours, but we did not rush and pulled the motors at one place and took them to my house to install the new bushing-my car is kept at my Grandpa's house across town-so we had some drive time and smoke breaks in that 3.5 hours. Ok so we did the headlight repair a bit differant than the TDS directions call for.

We left the headlight assy's in the car and just removed the motors. To make getting the motors out a bit easier we removed the turn signals, and then we removed all the bolts holding the body colored panel that the hood latch is bolted to so we could slide it side to side and have more room so get the motors out. The reason we did not remove the panel from the car is there is a black sencond panel that is bolted to the inside of the nose and some of the bolts we could not get to with the headlights still in the car. Anyways the motors came out nice-my car hs no rust so all the botls came out like butter. The motors came apart nice and with 2 guys working on it- holding the brushes in the drivers side motor was easy with some paper clips like the directions show you to make. I wish i would have done this repair months ago as it was not bad at all. I do recomend having a helper and the job will go much better.

 

I'm glad to hear the kit worked well for you.

Thanks,

Lon

 

Yes very very well, I do recomend this kit. I was also not trying to say the directions were wrong, was just posting the way I removed the motors.

 

Some people have small hands and prefer to pul out thee motor and actuator huosing leaving teh headlight bucket in place. I once got my arm caught between the bucket frame and front fascia. I had to toss rocks at the front bedroom window for my wife to hear me over the noise of her vacuum and bring some liquid soap and water to rescue me. This is why I perfer to remove the entire headlight bucket assy and work on it on a bench top.

 

Good story man LOL! That is why I removed the bolts for the panel that the hood latch bolts to-so we had more room. After the motors were removed we sat at the table and fix the motors.

 

Can you please tell me if this is the kit you purchased? http://www.top-downsolutions.com/Bod...ght-repair-kit

Im looking to rebuild my headlight motors as well and i've never done it.

 

That is the correct kit to repair your headlight motor. However the TDS 209280 kit is most likely all you'd need. If this it the first time the headlight motor was repaired what is bad are the hard gel bushings inside the gear. The gear will look bad when you first open the headlight actuator housing, but once you've cleaned it up with WD40 and a toothbrush and blow it off with compressed air you'll see the gear is undamaged. All the off-white chunks and dust inside the gear were the old gel bushings. Replace them with the machined Delrin bushings that come in the kit and you are good to go.

Lon

 

Thanks, I found the bushings you were talking about, very fairly priced. Im going to order them today. Thanks for your help.

 

The kit i got did not with the new gears, my gears were good