I have been having problems with my Driver's Side Headlight, not sure if this is the right board or not.

Right now both my headlights will come up and go down.. However, my driver's side headlight motor has been making a weird noise and doesn't come up until about a second or two after the other light and it seems to be weakening quickly. When I look at the "bad" headlight motor with the hood open, it continues to spin (you know, that thing on top of the headlight motor) for a few seconds after they go up and then also when they go down. Another weird thing when this noise with the headlite motor started to occur, now whenever I hit just the parking lights, the headlights come up too..

Have any of you had this same problem??? If so or if you have any experience with this, would the Headlight Repair Kit from Top Down Solutions Help me??

Please let me know any info you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Will

 

I may be wrong but it sounds like your motor is starting to strip out, I belive they operate off of a worm gear. Has anyone been setting on the front of the car.

 

Ok sounds like you have 2 problems here. First the plastic gear that makes the headlights move it most likely getting stripped. Now do a search about the headlight motor problem, I did a while back and somebody has a web site that tells you how to fix it. And if I remember correctly all you have to do is flip the gear around or spin it 180 degrees to the non stripped side.

Second problem sounds like to me yo have a faulty headlight switch, or wiring problem, but most likely the switch. Let us know with what you found.

Now the kit top down solutions has to offer may fix your problem, but if it is the gear it will not. Also the web site I saw also has a procedure on how to replace the 3 plastic *****/bushings with ball bearings. If it were me I would check out the web site first if you can find it.

 

Thank you guys for all of your help so far. As far as the electrical problem or the switch, it just seems weird that right at the same time that the headlight motor starts acting up that that would also.

Do you think my best bet is to order one of those kits and get the motor working good before trying to tackle the electrical or switch problems??

Also, did you remember that web site with the info on the headlight motor repair?

Once again thanks a million for all your help,
Will

 

This is a link to the instructions that I include with the headlight repair kit I manufacture. It will explain the problem you are having and the solution. IF it turns out you need a new gear I also have a few of those as well.

By all means also do a search on headlight repair and you'll find suggestions to replace the OEM bushings with bearings (and other creative items). I do not recommend ball bearings. They cause the gear to deform under load due to the decreased area of contact distributing the force from the gear to the 3-lobe cast hub. The close-tolerance, precision machined Delrin bushings in my kit are made specifically for this application and provide a much larger area of contact by comparison and won't distort the nylon gear. BTW, new nylon gears are not available. Aftermarket ones that are CNC machined of solid bronze are available for $60 each from a couple of sources. Also as mentioned previously, I have used ones available from time to time.

Lon Salgren
Top-Down Solutions

 

TBIformula91,
Believe it or not, I've got the exact same issue with my '91 'Form driver side headlight motor (weakening) and when it happened the parking lamp switch flips the headlamps up (though not lit).

Thanks Lon from TDS for responding! I'm gonna monitor this thread and see what works. Any other input from anyone else would be great too. Driving with one headlight sucks!

nForm91

 

you may have some teeth on the gears stripped out that has happend to before....chris

 

Th first thing i would do is un-plug each light at the light it-self. This location is by the head light motor. With each light
un-plugged turn it off and on to see if they function properly.If the driver side is still lazy then you will have to replace the gears in the motor. If not then you have to replace the head light control modual. I had the same problem as you and I was advised that it was the gears and after pulling out 6 perfect gears and 2 hours later, that was not the problem. 90-92 firebirds have this modual and it is expensive

 

Did you end up getting yours fixed?? How much was the module?

Thank you everyone for your great responses.
Will

 

Yes I fixed the problem by getting the modual. It was $320 canadian for the dam thing. I have a buddy with a shop manual and we did the test on the headlight motor itself to see if all the power and ground was good. The ONLY thing left was the modual. Replaced this and all is good now. You can get the wiring diag. and make a series of relays to do the same thing but I opted to keep my gta stock because it has low miles on her.