Hi guys, finally got around to working on my TA again after a few years, job, house, kid got in the way a bit! Been restoring the car to stock condition, got the interior looking like new with a full re-trim in tan and new carpets and the car finally back to its original color (black)......and no its wont be KITTified, this ones a survivor with only 70k on the clock.

Anyway, I'm in the UK and have a loaded 1984 H.O Trans-Am, the lighting harness was messed with when I got the car (converted to UK spec) so I imported a complete uncut factory lighting harness a few weeks ago. Got the harness fitted today and checked the 3 relays are good as per the factory service manual instructions......and hey presto the lights worked....well sort of:

Drivers side is 100% spot on, goes up and down instantly and smoothly, its good.

Passenger side, sometimes works in synchronization with the drivers side, sometimes its 5 seconds slower going up and down and sometimes you gotta tap the side of the motor or spin the **** on the top of the motor slightly for it to function. Also, when the headlights are on in the raised position, this motor "clicks" every few seconds and **** on the top tries to wind on........when the headlights are off in the lowered position, it does the same thing and the **** tries to move in the opposite direction to what it does when the lights are up.....as if the motor is still trying to drop the light even though its fully closed. The **** moves at the same time as the click noise, which I assume is the motor energizing.

With the lights off the motor gets increasing hot like its burning itself up. I have switched over the relay from the driver side headlight which works perfectly and the passenger motor still does the same thing, clicks when off or fully raised and gets hot.

From reading the service manual I understand that these motors work off friction telling them when to power off. I assume therefore a switch or contact has failed inside the motor itself so it doesn't know when it is fully up or down and as such is powering the motor causing it to overheat. Before I go and order a replacement motor for the car, can one of the gurus on here just confirm:

A) that I am correct in thinking it is the motor that is faulty here and nothing else?
B) is there any way to repair this motor

The motor does lift and lowers the headlight smoothly, so I assume the plastic cog inside it is fine and I've taken off the side cover and didn't see anything untoward in there either, I know I can get rebuild kits for broken cogs but not sure that is the fault, hence wanting to check on here how to proceed.

Thanks,
Alastair.

 

If you look inside with the cover off the side, there's a large copper wire that's retained in a brass piece that's just sorta folded around it. Often that connection will be weak and it'll make/break the circuit whenever it likes. Soldering the wire to the tab or even wrapping it with thin copper wire will usually make the connection strong enough to clear up that issue. There's also a pile of relays on the early cars, that may or may not work.