My left headlight doesnt pop up when I turn on the lights.Also when I disconnect the battery and then connect it, the black **** on the headlight body spins.How hard is it to replace, and if you have step-by-step instructions to give me, Ill appreciate it.My repair book doesnt cover replacing the motor.My car is a 1988 Trans Am GTA TPI 350 all options.Thanks.

 

Anybody?

 

The plastic bearings inside the gear have been shredded to little bits. Cost to fix is less than $5. I saved one guy's tech article, but the link doesn't work anymore, so I'll post the text here

Headlight Repair

Well, I've gone through this little repair enough times that I thought "If I have to do this one more time I'm going to put it down on paper" - so to speak. Well, I had to do it once more so here it is.

You may notice one day when you turn your headlights off that you continue to hear a whirring or grinding noise from the front of your car for several seconds before it stops. Well that noise will continue to get longer and longer until one day your headlights won't open or close properly - they'll just spin. Well this may be one of the reasons why (there is another reason that is explained in the text below.) Read ALL of the way through this before attempting, to see if you're up to the task - because certain parts can be a serious pain in the ****.

This is your headlight assembly once it's removed from the car. It's only four bolts but you have to take off the plastic body piece, the headlight bezel, and take out the light itself to get to it. At least I do. Remove the three bolts circled here.

This nut attaches the gear to the arm which actually moves the light up and down. Remove it as well.

Now then, we have just the motor. Remove the three bolts here. Nothing is under pressure so don't worry about it. Be gentle because there is a gasket underneath this lid that you would play hell finding to replace. Use a razor blade to carefully remove it for re-use.

Okay then. You can see the "gear" here. Above I mentioned two reasons for your headlight motor to not work. Here could be a simple one. If you notice that the teeth are stripped on half of the gear - there is your problem. Simply pull the gear and rotate it 180 degrees to put the good teeth into the screw. However, if that isn't your problem you'll have to carry on to the next step. On the shaft itself you will see some shims (notated by the yellow arrow) take them off and place them somewhere safe so they don't fall off and become lost. Try to pull out the gear by pulling on the shaft - wiggle it, wobble it, whatever it takes. If it flat out won't come out you're going to have to do some fancy work. Loosen and I mean loosen the two screws (one of them noted by the blue arrow) by an 1/8th of an inch - do not take the top off if possible. Again attempt to wiggle the gear out of there. Keep loosening and wiggling until you do. If you by chance take off the cover - we'll cover that in a bit.

Once you get the gear out, slide the plastic gear off of the metal shaft. If yours is like mine then a bunch of shredded plastic will fall out - that shredded plastic used to be three separate "*****" which stopped the gear from revolving. Well, not any more. Clean it out and clean out the housing as well.

Run out to your local hardware store and find some steel bearings that are around .38" to .40" in diameter - I think .40" is the perfect size. Drop them in there and re-assemble*. Voila! Working headlights for about an hours time and $2 in parts. I've been running my passengers side like this for well over a year with no problems and this photo shoot came from me doing the drivers side as well.
*Don't forget the shims and gaskets when re-assembling.


Ooops...

Well, if you weren't lucky enough to get your gear out without removing the top (like someone else I know), check this out. Go ahead and complete the above procedure if you haven't yet - but stop just short of re-assembly.

Okay, these little blocks (inside the blue circle) and the springs they back into (inside the red circle) have just become our arch-nemesi. There are two of them opposite each other along the wall. They have to be backed into those slots on either side of the cylinder - AND held there while you replace the cylinder. No easy task and it's going to require a second body. Get your girlfriend or someone to hold the upper part while you hold the two blocks in their respective holes against the pressure of the springs. This is going to require some type of scribe that has a 90 degree bend in it or a dentists' tool or something. Good luck!

If you want the pics, I'll attach them for ya. Funny that its your driver side one also. My passenger side one is still doing fine.

 

Thanks for the response.I thougth I was going to have to pay somebody for the work.

 

I almost did the same thing. But instead of ball bearings i just filled the area with JB weld. Been working for nearly 2 years now no problems.