headlight motor... - NJFBOA - Home of New Jersey's Camaros and Firebirds

maroman88 · 05-18-2009, 03:19 PM

thats wat i get for buying a bird! drivers side headlight motor started grinding for a good 10 seconds after i put it down yesterday. hit the keyless door locks and when the lights blink, now the headlights flip up and back down as well. for now the fuses are pulled and the lights are staying up. wats my best bet to go about fixing the motor, new gears? replace the motor? how do u remove the motor, take out the whole headlight assembly?

5.7TA · 05-18-2009, 05:42 PM

My friend's T/A did this as well, he replaced the fiberglass gears with a metal set, after that it was good. Here is some info about how to replace em, hope this helps you out some

http://www.rodneydickman.com/n113.html

http://www.bfranker.badz28.com/headl...earinstall.htm

KirkEvil · 05-18-2009, 05:44 PM

Grinding is most likely broken teeth on the plastic headlight gear. Idk why the headlights would flip up and down with the keyless lock.

To get to the motor assembly:
When you pop the headlight up, there should be a lower plastic tray bolted to either side of the headlight. Unbolt it, and use the adjustment screws to raise the headlight a little for clearance to pull the lower tray. You should now see a motor attached to a plastic gear box.

To replace the gear:
The motor is attached to a plastic gear box. Unbolt this combo together. Do not remove the motor from the gear box. There should be one side of the gear box that looks like a flat cover. It is glued on tight, you will have to pry this off, gently not to crack the housing. Use a sharp flat head screw driver and work your way around the cover. Once off you should see the white plastic spur gear up against the worm gear from the motor. Only pull out the white spur gear. The teeth should look broken or worn down.

Now, your options...Do it right and buy a replacement brass gear. Or go the cheaper route and buy a replacement plastic one. Its up to you if you want to gamble on doing this again. Grease the gears, and superglue the plastic cover back on. bolt everything back on and realign your headlight if you adjusted it for clearance.

If you are uncomfortable pulling apart the gearbox, I remember seeing a company on ebay that sold the motor/gearbox assembly, and you send yours in as a core. But this route is about $80 and they only put a plastic one back in. The do it yourself brass gear is like $40

EDIT: Damn you 5.7TA and your links

deadtrend1 · 05-18-2009, 08:42 PM

Just spin the gear 180*, jb weld the cover back on, and make sure the 4 little "pins" that hold the worm gear to the unit are tight.

and yea, metal gears will still fail if you dont make sure the unit is tight together

creeper · 05-19-2009, 03:34 PM

my passenger side motor burnt out the day after i bought my car. the driver side 2 weeks later. that was wonderful. i was originally going to go with the brass gears, but for $30 more each i decided to just pick up a re-manufactured set with lifetime warranties from autozone. they have plastic gears but who cares, i can bring em back whenever i want.

install is pretty easy, the first time took a while, but i can swap em out in about 15 minutes or less now. take off the black cover on the front, remove the headlight cover lid, remove 3 bolts holding motor assembly to bracket, remove bolt holding the arm to the motor shaft. all are 10mm bolts. the back one is a painnnn. luckily i had a really thin wrench, takes a while to find. small sockets or ratchet wrenches are also really helpful since there's not much room.

after about 2 months with mine i noticed the passenger side cover was popping off of the motor(was changing a DRL). i pulled it out and epoxied it, installed it and it just popped right back off again. took it to autozone and they replaced it for free with a brand new one which now has 3 screws holding that cover on so i never have to worry again woooo.

also, you might want to check if your front turn signals are working. for whatever reason the HCM goes nuts and they may not work. i didn't know mine didn't until about 6 months after it started grinding. always wondered why people cut me off. as soon as i fixed em, blinkers!

maroman88 · 05-20-2009, 04:09 PM

well... got it all apart last night, with the exception of that last freakin bolt on the motor itself, so i put it all back together and ran to home depot to buy metric wrenches lol. so today i got it out and tried the 180 flip... but that didnt help, slapped it all back together and im guna order the brass gears and just do it right

5.7TA · 05-21-2009, 03:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KirkEvil

...EDIT: Damn you 5.7TA and your links

Yeah, I probably should have put some more information in that reply, next time I'll post up some more info along with my Damn links, lol.

DevilDougWS6 · 05-21-2009, 06:39 PM

no no no. you dont even have to open up the motor, actually you dont even need to remove it. for a temp fix, or semi-permanent fix, just turn on the headlights, and disconnect the battery so they stay up. now remove the arm that connects the headlight to the motor from the cam on the motor, should be one 10mm nut or something like that.

now rotate the adjustment knob on top of the motor about 180 degrees and reconnect the arm and you are good to go.

maroman88 · 05-21-2009, 07:16 PM

lol... eff it i ordered a reman'd autozone one for $76, pickin it up tomorrow

89 Trans Am WS6 · 08-15-2009, 06:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by deadtrend1

Just spin the gear 180*, jb weld the cover back on, and make sure the 4 little "pins" that hold the worm gear to the unit are tight.

and yea, metal gears will still fail if you dont make sure the unit is tight together

ahahah been there and done that! thats what i get for using cheap epoxy lol