Joel Geerling

I accidentally bumped the pot metal frame to which my driver's side flip-up headlight/motor attach, when I was working on my car recently. The back corner (by the fender, the part where the headlight axis piece bolts on) cracked off, so the whole assembly was hanging limp, off to the side.

I checked out the other side and noticed that it had a stress crack forming in the exact same place that the driver's side broke when I bumped it.

I'm just wondering if this has happened to anyone elses' 'birds, and what you did to fix it (my grandpa was a sheet metal worker, so he helped my bend some alluminum strapping into place and rivet it on, along with some JB weld for good luck to hold the metal back together.

<If you don't know what I'm talking about, I can try to post pics of the fixed side and the stress-cracked side later>

Joel Geerling

Here is a picture - the arrows point at the metal piece; the orange arrow points to the corner that broke.

Mikos_89

I had the same problem also, but not as bad. Mine had a small hairline crack in it.

I don't think there's a way to fix it because that part is constantly under stress/load when you flip up/down the headlights.

I believe the bracket your talking about is made out of "cast magnesium" for rust prevention and light weight rather than "pot metal". But, I may be wrong.

You can try welding it, but for the cost of getting it welded by a shop, you could buy 5 of those metal headlight brackets your local (pick-it-yourself) wrecking yard. I pretty sure the headlight mounting brackets were the same on all '85-'92 Firebirds. It was just the part that "rotates" that was changed on the '91-'92s.

You can get those brackets rather cheap at the self-service junkyards. I only paid about $2.50 for mine at my local pick-it-yourself.

Goodluck!

-Mike