Ok, as of today Hawks tech tells me that there is another headlight module on the passenger side of the car somewhere. I cut my hand to shreds digging around for it with no luck. Anybody care to enlighten me of this? Hi all, I am new to the site but have had a good deal of F-body's in previous years. Well here is some years later I had the F-body itch again so I looked around and found my car. I picked up a metallic green L-98 '91 GTA that is in pretty good shape for its age but has some minor issues that need addressing. I have most issues covered but am having one hell of a time trying to figure out my headlights. The problem is that if I turn on just the parking lights the headlights flip up but unlit untill you fully turn the switch on. With that I changed the relay on the firewall with no luck so then I moved on to replace the headlight switch as well. With both the new switch and relay I am still having the same problem. I double checked to make sure that my parts were good so I put them in another 91 Trans Am and they worked fine so now knowing the parts are good what is left that I could have overlooked or missed? As far as I know there arent any other relays. I called a few local Pontiac dealers to see if I could drop the car off and have them lok at it but they told me that they wouldnt be able to help either and Hawks Third Gen told me to install a toggle switch for the parking lamps lol thanks but no thanks. Anybody have any suggestions?</p>

 

what you need is Hawk's headlamp rebuild kit. before i rebuilt mine and before the motors went out completely, everytime i would turn on the parking lamps, the headlights would flip up just as you describe. i ordered the part from Hawks (~25 bucks), spent the hour or two fixing the headlamp unit, and afterwards i not only had headlamps that would go up and down without grinding or sticking, but only flip up when they're supposed to. dont ask me how that fixed it, because i dont know. it just did lol. hope this helps.

 

There is just one relay, the one on the firewall. If you're replacing it (and I doubt that is the problem) make sure you use the correct headlight control module. The 1987-89 uses a different module than the 1990-92.

86firebird350 is correct. The problem you're experiencing is more likely caused by bad bushings inside the gear. Once you replace them with the ones in the headlight repair kit your problem will be solved.

Lon Salgren
Top-Down Solutions

 

Hey guys,thanks for the information. I know that the module has to be correct for that year and with or without Foglights. My passenger side headlight is pretty much on its way out because it takes a few more seconds to open as opposed to the drivers side and upon closing the motor spins a good 10 seconds after the lamp is down. I went through everything including an 1/8th of my thumb in the garage for hours thus far with no results. I will give Hawks a call to get the rebuild kits for the lights and if that doesnt do it I will be back here again.

 

Only the 82-85s use the seperate motor relays. Later years used the firewall mounted one for both headlights.

 

Ordered the kit from Hawks, upon cleaning the front end in preperation I cleaned the whole underside of the front end as well as shining everything I could possibly fit my hands into under the hood (Im very neurotic) removed the foglights to clean the glass and just to replace the bulbs in all of the front end as well and accidently dropped the foglight helplessly watching it break into tiny little pieces. Things are dam near impossible to find so I dropped a $120.00 on E-Bay for a whole complete foglight and marker light set. Do these cars have any parts that are cheap and easy to find? Lol

 

wow. u definately should have checked out hawks for that too. they have used ones for $50. i had a little incident with my fog light as well this past weekend, so ill be spending some money on one of those soon.

 

I'm glad that Hawks was able to get you set up with one of my headlight repair kits. Yes it is a substantial savings over either a new or a used headlight motor. I did a quick search and see that we're approaching 3000 headlight motors repaired to-date.

Lon Salgren

 

Hi all, just a update for you guys reading this post. I have rebuilt both headlights with the rebuild kit from Hawks. Other than the bolts snapping off for the motor to gear drive assembly (Which Hawks includes a set of small machine screws and nuts just for this reason) everything went well. I fished around E-bay and found a new set of foglights and driving lights and insatalled them as well. It took about 5 hours all together but I did a lot of cleaning, replacing all bulbs etc and it worked out perfect.The lights work as they should and the old girl is happy as she was rolling off the showroom floor. Thanks everyone!