How many times has this happened to you? You're getting ready to go out. jump in your bird, fire it up, hit the headlight switch and only one headlamp pops up. Well this happen to me a couple of nights ago and it was bugging me like crazy on what the problem could be, I thought it was the actuator module ($800 from the dealership mind you, I have an '89 formula) I thought I was going to be smart, and piggyback it to the working headlight with a couple of relays in between. It didn't work. So I took an old headlight motor with bad gears but worked and try my luck... The motor works so it wasn't my actuator module. So that means it's a bad motor. Now the actuators on my 89 arer from an 84, i fabricated a couple of pigtail adapters so I can use either type of actuator (thank you thirdgen.Org forums) long story short, there is a cover on the outside of the earlier 3rd gen actuators that houses the contacts for the motor, being the smart monkey I am I pull that cover off the non-functioning actuator and found out one of my contacts have broken off causing the motor to not function. So, I pull the contacts assembly out of the stripped motor put them in the non-functioning motor and voila!, a working headlight motor again!! (Unfortunately with the changes made to the firebird '87 - '92 actuators, this only works for the '82 - '86 year headlight actuators)

 

I tried to add photos to this post but it kept saying wrong format once I get that squared away I'll post some photos of what I did.

 

I don't know if this helps/hurts but...

I ran into bad gears for the headlight motors on both sides of my '93 Corvette. Eckler's had replacement gears for about $30.00 each.

Would those gears be the same between the Firebird/Corvette? if so, it wasn't that bad a deal to replace the gears, if you're mechanically inclined.

 

I thought about that too, but the donor car I have had two good headlight motors so I didn't see spending the money for the gears...yet lol. That I am sure will be in the future though I'm sure. As far as compatibility between the Vette and the bird, I couldn't tell you.

 

I answered part of the question Googling a bit...

I don't know if they're the same size, but these look identical to the ones I installed in my '93 Corvette...in fact, I noticed the Ebay seller is a Corvette specialist.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/87-92-Ponti...bird#vi-ilComp

 

Thanks for the info, if and when my headlight gears strip I'll be sure to hit that link 😁

 

Hi, you actually only use half of the gear, if it strips you can just use the other 180 degrees of fresh teeth