alright i managed to take my headlight assembly out without much work, just 4 bolts. got the gear out that the worm gear spins and it is fine. however, the three "*****" that are supposed to be in the corner of the gears are gone completely. can i just use a steel bearing that fits? any drawbacks? i dont exactly understand why there is that whole triangle deal to begin with. why not just make it a solid connection instead of using those 3 ***** in the corners of the triangle? is there something im not seeing here?

 

also, forgot to add write this before. one of the 3 screws that holds the cover over the big gear broke off on me. where can i find a replacement? common screw in a hardware store ?

 

yes, cylindrical metal or heavy plastic bearings in those three 'corners' will work fine. there are kits you can buy for about $5 each from topdownsolutions.com, which work well. but if you get some steel or aluminum stock of the right diameter from a hardware store, you could cut your own if you can't find premade bearings.

the screw should be a pretty common size, but it's just as easy to drill it out and tap a hole for whatever screw you want to use.

 

will an entire ball bearing fit in there or do u need to cut the top/bottom off it so it fits in there? im still a little lost on why they used the ***** in the corner in the first place when they designed it? are the plastic gear and metal rod ever supposed to slip or give a little maybe? or should they be one strong unit? what if i did something like fill in the entire space with jbweld so they were permenately locked together?

 

i was thinking, maybe those 3 ***** are there so the gear and metal thing has a little bit of "give" there so if theres snow or something blocking the headlights it wont strip the plastic gear or break the motor? what were the 3 ***** made of originally?

 

don't know what the original shapes were, i think it was just a gel fill. (haven't had the need to take a good one apart)

anyway, here's the type of fix the kit uses. from an engineering standpoint, ball bearings should also work, but cylinders are better (they'll distribute loads more evenly. they don't need to be hollow, but it makes the drawing easier)

 

nice pic. ill give the ball bearings a shot tomorrow, hopefully they will work and not destroy the teeth on the gear or burn out the motor.

anyone got experince with these things? what did u do to fix it?

 

My friend and I used about 15 BB's... worked great for a little while, until the BBs ate up the plastic :P

 

thats not good, u think one solid ball bearing will wear down the plastic?

 

go to the local Wal-Mart, etc. and purchase a pack of 4"x.44" high temp glue sticks. Cut to length and install, worked for me and no damage to plastic, It will only work with the larger sticks(>44 or larger) Les

 

one ball bearing probably won't do much better than the BB's. when you put the cylinder in, it distributes the forces/loads/stress along a much larger contact area (red in the drawing). when you use a ball, or many small BB's, you get a very small contact area. basically, this increases the stresses transmitted to the plastic, plastic fails, you need a new $45 brass main gear.

 

yeah i see, probably wont do the ball bearings then. i'll try to find some plastic tubing or something that i can cut to size and fill it in with lithium grease.

but actually, would the ball bearings even be rotating inside the gear? the way i see it, the ***** would never roll against the plastic, just hold the metal shaft in place.

 

i found that a 1/2in drill bit fits almost perfectly in the corners. the bottom shaft of it that goes into the drill not the actual cutting part. any idea if that would work if i cut it to size? what the hell do i need to cut a drill big drill bit tho? is it possible? can u guys think of anything similare that can be used.

 

marker cap too weak? still looking around for stuff that fits in there.

 

I've gotta do one of those headlight rebuilds too. Starting to feel like Vanna White every time I turn on my lights..... gotta run out front and manually flip the lights up. They close just fine, tho.....

 

yep mine are the same way, just the driver side tho. i'll leave the passenger side alone until i hear it start whirring too, cant be far behind. hate running out of the car to flip it up.

still looking for ideas on what to use in the triangle. what about my jbweld idea??

 

sears hardware had these nylon spacers, they look just like the things in your drawings there. perfect fit, little bit of play each way too. put some lithium grease on them and the gear and put it all back together. working perfectly, now time will tell if they hold up. now i just gotta stick the headlight back into the car and im all done. thanks for all the help.

 

just for future reference, the nylon spacers i used were stock # 635-F at sears hardware. they are 3/8X. 171X1/2 in size. 15 cents each, u need three.

i went for months with the broken headlight, thinking it was an incredibley hard job and i didnt want to start it. but after actually going after it, its not that hard at all. i read thread after thread and some people make it out to be extremely difficult,,, its not. u guys out there with broken tail lights like me, if your motor is still working you probably just need the three nylon spacers.

 

FYI, I sell a repair kit containing all the parts you need to repair the 1987-92 Firebird headlight units.

Lon Salgren
Top-Down Solutions

http://www.top-downsolutions.com/pro...products_id=87

 

yeah i saw that kit, looks very complete but if your careful you can save a few bucks and just reuse the old gasket and nylon spacers work well. i dunno how they will work in the long run but for now they are working great. dont want to take any bussiness away from your kit, but i think most people only need the 3 15 cent spacers. are your spacers made specifically to work in these mechanisms? im not exactly sure why there were designed like that, u know anything about why it was made this way? what would happen if u just jbwelded the gear and shaft together?

 

In the past I've seen suggestions to use everything from leather, hot-melt glue gun sticks, wooden dowels, ball bearings to nuts. My delrin bushings are not an "off the shelf" band-aid. The Delrin bushings in my headlight repair kits are precision machined to my drawing to a very close tolerance and specically made for this application. The large diameter nylon gear isn't available new. As already correctly pointed out expensive aftermarket ones are available that are machined from solid brass. Why skimp and use something that isn't designed for this application and risk ruining the nylon gear? The small amount saved now will cost a lot more to repair in the future.

Lon Salgren
Top-Down Solutions

 

like i mentioned before, lon's kits are a quality fix, and cheap too. as for expedient solutions if you need them back in the car tomorrow, if a 1/2" drill bit works, go to home depot or lowe's and get some 1/2" round aluminum or steel stock and cut that to fit. use a dremel, hacksaw, whatever. don't waste your time cutting drill bits.

 

although, in reality, i hadn't thought about it, but how does the yield stress of delrin compare to the nylon they used? because for long term, you'd want something that would wear out before the gear. (not that the gear is likely to fail using delrin, at least i haven't seen it happen, but i would guarantee the gear would wear out quicker than 1/2" steel cylinders, though that might not be for 10 million uses....)

 

The original material GM used wasn't nylon. It appears to be a solid gel material of some sort, more similar to urethane in consistency. I have a few samples of good OEM inserts kicking around here someplace. The compression strength of the Delrin is superior. It also has a better natural lubricity to it than the OEM material. I haven't had the two tested though. I'm just going by my feel for the two. The I suspect the original material has some cushioning or shock absorbtion capability. The Delrin won't have this. But the original gel inserts were the weak-link in the system. They would distort, crack and eventually break up into a spoonfull of chunks rendering them useless. I can guarantee the Delrin won't suffer that fate. It should provide years of trouble-free use.

Lon Salgren
Top-Down Solutions

 

sorry, i wasn't comparing the OEM gel vs the delrin, i was talking about the large nylon gear. basically, i think the gel was made to be the weak link in the system because it's the cheapest part to replace. it just dawned on me that using steel, aluminum, or maybe even delrin bushings will make the large gear now the weak link.

but like i said, i've never heard of problems using any cylindrical bushing to fix it causing the big gear to wear out, though i have heard of ball bearings tearing things up. and in all likelihood, even if the nylon does become the weak link, it's still more than strong enough that the new assembly as a system should last for years.

economically, (this goes for us users and lon) you'd want a kit that is still the weakest link, just by a little. you'd want to replace the $5 kit again before the $50 brass gear is needed to replace the nylon one. not that you want to make a weak kit, but it's simpler and cheaper to swap out some plastic cylinders twice rather than get one new big gear, that's all.

 

Along the headlight fix lines. What's the trick for getting the springs and the little brass(?) pieces to stay in place while you drop the Gear in place? The springs send the little pieces to where I can't drop the gear all the way in without snapping them in half. I probably didn't do a good job of explaining but anyone who has done this probably knows what I'm talking about.

 

use a bent paper clip/staple/wire to hold them in, put the motor together so that the brushes are in the right place, then pull the wires/paper clips

i think lon might have a picture on his website actually.

 

what spring and brass metal peices are you talking about? mine didnt have anything like that.

 

I agree that the weak link in this system should be the bearings/cylinders/gel/whatever. Obviously, that was the case as designed by GM, hence all of our non working headlights . Cylinders will result in a greater distribution of the load, thus leading to longer life of the plastic gear. Metal cylinders or bearings will erode the plastic over time. So, my optimal choice would be a cylinder of a material slightly softer than the plastic gear. However, I used steel ball bearings in mine a few years ago and they are still working fine. Had I thought about it more, of course I would have used plastic cylinders. Live and learn, or live and hope-to-get-lucky.

 

he's talking about the internals of the electric motor. on some versions, you need to take the motor shaft out, and the brushes (the little carbon blocks that act as the electrical leads) are spring-loaded against the shaft. if your motor is in one piece, don't worry about it. you probably only needed to fool with the gears.

 

The picture of how to modify paperclips (the method I use and recommend) is shown here in figure 5 on my instructions I include with the repair kit I sell.

Lon Salgren
Top-Down Solutions

 

right, that or just spend the $90 on the brass gears if you ever get to the point where it actually fails in the nylon gear...

(i'd be interested to know if that's why all the 4th gen ones fail, what was the attachment method on those? they obviously didn't use the gel again, right?)

 

yeah thats why i had a hard time deciding what to use as a replacement. i think the original gel fills were there so if there was heavy snow on the headlights, or someone sitting on one for example when u went to turn them on, it would absorb the stress at the weak gel instead of stripping the big gear with that metal worm gear. also so the motor itself wouldnt burn itself out.

these nylon spacers seem to do the trick, and there is a slight bit of play when turning the shaft w/ the nylon spacers installed. both my headlights come up at the same exact time.

wish someone had told me how "easy" it is to remove the headlight assmebly, i would have done this long ago. from some of the posts ive read, people made it out to be a huge ordeal.

 

wow u guys are too quick replying, my previous post was in reply to mikeS.

 

I just wanted to say that I have used Lon's kit and my lights have worked great since I put them in. The inserts used were a very precise fit. I think that the delrin bushings will be a much better choice mainly because of possible problems using metal in a plastic cylinder. I would rather spend a few more dollars now and get a precision replacement than use metal bearings and have to find entire new motors later. Lon is also a sponsor for this site and I don't mind dropping a couple of dollars to support the sponsors.

 

Agreed. I'd have gone that route when I did mine if his kit had existed then. Actually, I'd have gone that route if I'd have just taken a little more time to think about it instead of running out for steel .

 

I just replaced the actuator relay on my drivers side headlight assy and I can tell you how I took the headlight assy out and put it back in.

There are 4 bolts that hold the headlight assy in place. Two on the top and two under and behind the headlamp.

The two bolts on the top can be removed without doing anythng other than opening the hood. The two on the bottom need to have the headlight bezel removed. Once the bezel is removed you need to take the headlight out. I found that the headlamp connection will pull out of the headlight assy if the lamp is removed and the headlight assy is lowered. The lower bolt towards the center can be removed with a long extension with a universal joint and a 10mm socket. Once it is loose I could reach in with my hand and unscrew it. The headlight assy has to be in the up position for this though.

The only hard part is the lower fender side mounting bolt. With the headlight in the up position and the plastic bezel removed you can reach all the bolts except that one. I used a long extension with a universal joint and a 10mm socket. This allowed me to reach in and take that fender side lower bolt off.

Once the bolts are all out and the headlight lamp connector is disconnected you can work the Headlight assy out to where you can disconnect the chassis side connector from the acuator relay. The chassis connector has 3 wires. It is held in place with a plastic clip. I used the small blade on my swiss army knife to pop it loose and carefully work it out. There is a single black wire that looks like it should have a fuse in it. This can be disconnected by gently prying the retaining clip so it releases. The headlight assy. should now be free of the car. This is where you can do all that gear stuff if needed in the comfort of your dinning room while the wife watchs to see if you scratch her table! grin.

Installation is pretty much the reverse of the above with some tips listed below.

When putting the headlight assy back in I put the bottom fender side bolt through the hole in the headlight assy and used the extension with univseral joint and socket to hold the bolt in position as I lowered the headlight assy into place. I then turned the bolt a few turns. Once it is started into its nut the other bolts can be fitted into place. I always like to have all bolts in place and loose to make sure everything is where it should be.

One really annoying thing I found was the headlight wires always will end up behind or under the headlight assy if you do not purposefully direct them at the time you put the assy in place. You pretty much have to disconnect them as there is not enough play in the headlamp wires to remove the headlight assy with them connected.

There is also a thread in the electrical section that talks about headlight assys.

I just got this 1983 firebird and the headlight not going down was the first repair project I have done on it. I am glad that others have worked on all these issues as it gives a newbie like me a leg up in trying to figure out what to do to fix things. My next projects are

1. Get a spare tire
2. Get the oil pressure gauge working
3. Get the water temperature gauge working
4. Get some primer and paint on those rusty spots.
5. Find out where to get rubber parts to repair the old damaged rubber seals on the T-top, windows, and doors.
6. Find a turn signal plastic piece that includes the GM style washer control. I have fixed broken ones in the past but this car came without any plastic parts. Then I will see if the windshield washer works, :^).
7. Start to find were the various noises that do not sound normal are coming from. My bets are that most noises will be fixed with new rubber seals on door windows.

8. All kinds of stuff but the above is what comes first.

I hope this is helps someone. I can only speak for my 1983 firebird and I am not sure if these instructions will work on other years.

dzimmerm

 

Glad the repairs are going well so far...

1. Junkyard?
2. Sending unit more than likely (we'll try other threads on that)
3. same
4. No problem
5. www.sunroofdoctor.com, www.nextgenparts.com
www.thirdgenresource.com, or www.gmpartsdirect.com
I'm sure you can find part numbers on a thirdgen.org search.
6. Junkyard or one of those parts places would be a good try.
7 and 8. All in due time...

 

Quote from MikeS.
-----------------------------
Glad the repairs are going well so far...

1. Junkyard?
2. Sending unit more than likely (we'll try other threads on that)
3. same
4. No problem
5. www.sunroofdoctor.com, www.nextgenparts.com
www.thirdgenresource.com, or www.gmpartsdirect.com
I'm sure you can find part numbers on a thirdgen.org search.
6. Junkyard or one of those parts places would be a good try.
7 and 8. All in due time...
-----------------------------


MikeS,

I will look into those links. Some of them look like what I will be needing. I really need to get up on the 3rd Gen lingo. I am such a newb in this area.

I got a doughnut type spare tire today, junkyard, for 25.00. Looks new. I will try it on to make sure it fits. It is supposed to but I would rather not find out I was wrong in the middle of Timbuktoo. I also need to make sure it holds that 60 pounds of air pressure it is supposed to be inflated to.

It has been raining almost constantly since I got the car and I wanted the humidity down to 50% or less when I put on rust stop and primer. Since I am in central ohio I guess I will just have to wait a few weeks for the summer season to start before I do any serious rust repair.

Found a turn signal arm at Advance Auto parts. It was supposed to be a universal GM but the two plastic tabs on the washer part did not line up properly and they also caused the main wiper part to bind. I am going to rework it and move the tabs to the correct location, (cut them off and melt in steel paper clip wire in the correct locations), and see if I can get it to work the way it should.

I have enought working that I should be able to use this car to drive to work now.

Thanks again for the info.

dzimmerm

P.S. This is getting away from the electrical headlight issue so I wll not be surprised if it gets moved, .