All of a sudden my headlight motors have decided to stop working. They were working fine, until the other night when I went to wal-mart, came out to leave, and they would no longer come up. (Did I mention that I hate wal-mart?) Anyways, I had to manually raise them just to get home. The lights will come on, but they will not raise up. When I first tried to manually raise them, they wouldnt ley me. I had to crawl underneath the car, and disconnect one wire from each motor, which would then let me raise them, without the motor immediately putting them back down. Please keep in mind that these are the 82-84 style headlight motors, which are completely different from the 85-92 ones. All my fuses are fine, what should I check for? I tried searching, but only found info on the 85-92 motors, since they seem to be much more troublesome. I've never had a problem with them until now.

 

Anyone? I took apart the headlight switch last night, and its not the problem. I jumped the terminals on the connector for the headlights, and they still do the same thing. I was looking at the wiring diagram in my haynes manual, but Its not labeled very well. It looks like the headlight motors are wired in series though, so if one stops working, then both will. What should I check for? I also noticed that there are relays by each headlight motor. Could these burn out?

 

I think that your problem could be related to the isolation relay. There should be 3 relays that operate your headlight motors. Each motor has its own relay and there is a third relay (the isolation relay) that helps control the other 2 relays. Odds are that if both lights stopped working at once the problem is related to the isolation relay, either its the relay itself or the wiring to it. If I remember correctly, the isolation relay on my 84' is on the passenger side of the car behind the headlight area, near the radiator.

Do you have a voltmeter? If not you should get one in order to check the voltages at the relay. If you don't have one you can get one for under $20. I bought mine at Radio Shack for $10.

Here are what voltages you should get at the wires to the isolation relay:

With Lights off:
YEL : 0 V
WHT :12V
DK BLU /WHT : 12
PNK : 0
DK BLU :12
BLK : 0

With Lights on:
YEL :12
PNK : 12
BLK : 0

This data is from my 85 Firebird Service Manual. Your car should have almost identical wireing to the headlight motors. I believe 82-86 were pretty much the same system. 87 on up systems were different. The only difference that I have notice in the headlight motors between my 84 and 85 is the location of the isolation relays.

 

best advice i can give.....go buy a camaro

 

Hehe, I guess I could buy a camaro... Or I could just get a camaro front clip, and have a firemaro! Thanks for the info 84and85bird, I didnt know there was a third relay. I'll go check that right now

 

Well, 84and85bird, guess what. I checked the wires like you said, and the pink wire was dead with the lights on. I shorted the pink wire to the battery, and up came the lights I'm about to run to autozone to get a relay, thanks very much, I'd have never even thought to check that.

 

Glad that I could help you out.

I know how frustrating the headlight motors can be at times. Earlier this summer I had a fusible link go bad to my relay for the passenger side motor. It took me a while to find the problem. I was getting 11.5 volts at the relay so I didn't really think anything of it. After several days of studying the wiring diagrams and testing wires I traked the problem down to a corroded wire. I didn't think that a half of a volt low would cause a problem.