As most of you know, the headlight button is divided into grey (headlights, parking lights and fog lights come on) and black (just parking lights and fog lights come on) sections. When I push the black section to turn on the parking lights / fog lights only, the headlights now pop up as well. It used to be that I could leave the headlights off as long as I did not push the headlight section of the switch. Any ideas why it may be malfunctioning? Do I just need a new switch or is something else wrong with it?

I tried to search to find the answer for this problem, but only come up with headlight motor problems and solutions.

 

My car does this as well. I'm not sure what the deal is but my current car has always done this since day one.

 

mines to, i want it to wher wen i turn my parking lights and fog lights on mii headlamp stays down

 

That's how the 1982-1989 cars worked at least. I'm not sure but so far every 1991-1992 car I've seen recently pop up the head lights when the parking lamps are turned on. The motors also seem to run for quite some time after turning off the lights.

 

I've had more than one customer report that repairing their headlight motors using a headlight repair kit solved this problem for them.

Lon

 

This makes some sense as the driver side headlight did not want to come up all the way one time. It fixed itself on the next try, but may need some work.

 

yea i jus replaced both my motors and now i can turn on mii parking light and fog lights without raising the headlamp

 

My headlight motors work perfectly and I still have the problem. Doesn't make any sense to me why worn gears inside the motor would cause the lights to come up when the parking lights are active. Maybe I'm missing something but that just doesn't seem possible.

 

Since I haven't experienced the problem this is just a theory of mine at the moment regarding the cause. I suspect that the switch contacts are going bad and stray voltage it getting to the circuit to power the headlight motors. If the bushings inside the gear are bad this small amount of voltage will be enough to energize them. Once you've repaired the headlight bushings it takes too much power to overcome the static friction and start the motor. If this were happening to me I'd replace the headlight switch and see if the problem went away. Again this is just a theory and since my Firebird hasn't exhibited the problem I can't test it.

As for my prior post about the headlight repair kit solving the problem. More than one of my customers headlight motors was experiencing this problem. They sent me either an e-mail or mentioned in the review of my 209280 deluxe headlight repair kit that replacing the broken bushings using the kit also solved the problem of the headlight buckets rising when you push the running light switch. Why it worked is a puzzle to me too. I don't advertise that the kit solves this seemingy unrelated problem too. I only have a theory as to what is going on and why it is resolved by using my kit. I'm just sharing the information that was sent to me by more than one customer.

Lon

 

Interesting theory. The motor rebuild kits are cheap and I've got plenty of spares lying around to test this with.

 

To really test it you'd want to also swap the switch into someone elses car. But we're dealing with three components here; switch, headlight control module and motors. You may need to swap modules and motors too until you finally find the bad component. Just keep notes as you do it so you eventually can find the problem.

The Firebird Service manual doesn't cover the topic under "headlights" "foglights" or Headlight doors" system diagnostic. It only states under the headlight doors section that pressing the headlight switch, the headlight doors open and headlights light. At this point pressing PARK, the headlights should go off, but the doors remain open. Pressing the OFF, the doors close. It doesn't cover what the proper action should be if you just press the PARK part of the switch starting at the OFF condition.

Lon

 

Well I did replace the headlight switch on my car and still had the same problem. That's where I figured the problem was at first.

 

in my experience with this issue it occured when the motors were "going out" or went out meaning the parts that you buy from Lon to fix the lights also fixes the "automatic un wanted up" issue. if your motors run after a tad when the light is full up or down this will cause this issue in my findings.

when i fixed my friends 91 GTA and my other friends 92 vert bird they both had this issue. after the fix they could hit the drivers and the heads would say put.

you guys with the issue do this test, have someone man the switch and you go hold the ***** of the motors and hold em good as if the motor werent bad. by not allowing the motor to get that lil extra "twitch" the drivers should come on and the heads stay put.

 

I know this is an old thread but I'm having the same issue. Replaced the headlight/parking light switch inside the car, still have the problem. Also sometimes the lights just don't come up. Not because of the bad gears, I fixed the inside of the motor, it's just as if the switch isn't making contact.

 

Sometimes my lights pop up but the lights aren't on. I wish this was a 'supposed to happen' feature. I assume it's not making good contact inside. Try a new switch 1st.

 

actually in the trouble shooting section of the 1987 pontiac firebird factory service manual, i was having some problems with the motors starting at all, and i noticed it said the the doors should open with the parking light pressed

 

I had similar electrical issues with the headlight motors running after I turned off my headlights. This would only happen with the passenger side motor, which seemed to lag behind the driver's side when going up and coming down. However, the passenger side motor would keep running even if I turned off the parking lights only. Someone suggested that there could be an accessory, such as an old car alarm, spliced into the light wiring, but I traced everything and couldn't find any loose wires. My next step was to either replace the headlight switch, or take the prominent advice of LONSAL and replace the nylon bushings inside the motors. I had some bushings I ordered a while back, and I decided I could try this first before shelling out the 20 for a new switch. I pulled the passenger side motor and opened her up to find pieces of rubber bits. It turns out that the PO or PPO decided to use 1/2 rubber fuel line cut into pieces roughly the same size as the bushings to solve the problem, LOL. So, I pulled those out and put in some new nylon bushings, bolted her back up and problem solved!! The lights work like new! Definitely take the time to pull the motors and inspect them, because replacing those bushings will at least narrow down or fix the issue.