OutsiderIROC-Z

Just recently, my Formula's headlights have developed an annoying issue. When i turn them on, either they don't pop up at all, or one side will pop or the other side. Very rarely will they both pop up. The lights come on, regardless of whether or not they pop up. When they don't pop up, they don't make any noise like they are trying to.

Any ideas where to start looking? As of now, I don't trust this car after dark.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

moparman

My guess is the motors are shot. You can manually raise and lower them.

OutsiderIROC-Z

How do you raise and lower them manually?

moparman

Raise the hood and look beside the headlights. You should see the motors. On the end of each motor, may be under a rubbery cover that can be pulled off, you'll see a round "button". This can be turned to raise and lower the headlights.

Fatdog2

If you disassemble the headlight area where the motor and the round gear is attached to it you will see that you can remove the big plastic gear and flip it around ,then reattached it.The motor only uses 1/2 of this gear anyway.I did this on my old bird (93) and it worked great.You can also go to a corvette website I believe and they sell brass gears but I think that's overkill.All this providing you can hear the motor(headlight) humming when you open and close the lights.Might check shoebox's sight or google on the headlight fix as well.You can see the teeth on one half of the gear will be chewed up.Hope this helps.

Fatdog2

By flipping it around I mean 180 degrees.not reversed.Use Moparmans information on opening the light first.My02.

Injuneer

Brent Franker, a member here, has a great page describing the various Firebird headlight problems and the cure. Open the link and scroll down to:

4th Generation Headlight Fix

Problems can be due to the gear, but also the motion stops being broken off, corroded connectors, the motor case being loose and flexing, and the headlight control unit, bolted to the side of the air intake box behind the driver side headlight.

OutsiderIROC-Z

There are not any noises from the motors when they don't work, which leads me to think it's an electrical issue of some sort, and I hate working on electrical problems.

OutsiderIROC-Z

Thank you for posting that link, I appreciate it.

GaryDoug

This is a common problem. I have the same issue from time to time. The gearbox binds too much, so it jams tight when it reaches a stop. The motor drive electronics stops the motor power if it detects that the motor isn't turning so fast that you don't hear anything happen. It binds because of worn gears, especially the worm gear (plastic), and the motor shaft bushings. I believe that the metal drive gears make the matter worse by wearing out the plastic worm gears. Also, the metal tabs that hold the motor to the gearbox are a poor design and get loose over time, making the binding worse. You can try to bend the tabs back to make the motor tighter against the gearbox, but that usually lasts a few months or so. The only real fix is to replace the whole assembly. I have gotten into the habit of loosening the gears by turning the ***** manually after each trip so that they start out loose and don't jam. Sitting overnight with the motors at the hard stops seems to be worse than short term operation, i.e. works fine all day until it sits overnight, and then won't work until loosened.

OutsiderIROC-Z

Thank you, Gary!

Fatdog2

I forgot about Brent Franker.My bad.Great site.