4) The headlight just won't go up at all and it seems like the motor is shot. This could actually be a couple of things. The easiest thing and is actually quite common is that the headlight motor connector gets very corroded. There ends up being so much corrosion in there that 12v can no longer make it through the corrosion to the headlight motor and it just quits working. Unplug the connector near the headlight motor and check the connections. Normally it will be very easy for you to see this corrosion as the connector may even appear burned or slightly melted due to the heat caused by the high resistance just prior to it completely not working. This is an easy check and is free so look at this first if your light doesn't move at all.

5) The headlight won't go up or once up, the headlight will not lower. If it is not the corroded connector like mentioned above then it could be the light is getting jammed in place. This can happen with either the nylon or brass gears. I'm not 100% certain what causes it but it does seem to be related to some moving part in the headlight assembly wearing. Believe it or not, I don't actually have a Firebird anymore so can't study this and figure out exactly why It does seem to happen primarily on older Firebirds or ones where the lights get a lot of use so I do believe it is caused by something wearing which causes the light to get jammed in place. A lot of people will just raise the hood, spin the manual raise/lower **** a couple times, and then the light will go up/down. This fixes the problem but only for that one cycle and that is no good. The good news though is that I can explain a fix to ya that seems to work most of the time. What you can do to help prevent the light from getting jammed is to STOP it a little early. This will help to prevent the light from getting jammed. You can do this by making the stops which the raise/lower arm make contact with a little larger. Since they are molded into the plastic front headlight frame, just putting a larger one on isn't an option. But, what you can do is something fairly simple. It might require a little trial and error but the fix will be easy and cheap. What you need to do is put some THICK and fairly firm rubber tubing/hose over the stop. The tubing/hose has to have an inside diameter such that it will fit snugly on the existing stop or it will fall off What this will do is make the raise/lower arm make contact SOONER which means that the light will not go up (or down) quite as far and thus, hopefully, prevent it from getting jammed in place. If you try this and find that it didn't work for you, it is possible your tubing/hose is too soft or not thick enough. If too soft, get a harder hose If not thick enough you can either replace it with a thicker piece of tubing/hose or you can add ANOTHER piece of tubing/hose over the existing one to make it thicker which will stop the light even sooner. I don't know what size is best for this. There are so many brands and sizes out there that it would be impossible for me to list what works. What you can do though is take a look down in there and locate these stops. Use a pencil or bolt or whatever you have that is about the same size. You can then go to Home Depot or a hardware store and go to the tubing/hose section and get a few pieces like 6" or 1' long or however short they'll allow you to purchase. You should be able to get several sizes and hunks to experiment with for just a buck or two and have more than enough to do both your lights.

5a) On a side note and kinda related to problem 5 above is that you may find that you experienced the light getting jammed. Knowing that these lights have a raise/lower **** associated with them, you used the raise/lower **** to get the light started and then cycled them electrically and they worked. However, right after you did this when the light went down, you heard the terrible noise of a stripped gear. Bummer. What I believe happens and I've heard of it a couple of times is that what happened is some teeth on the nylon gear actually BROKE and that is what caused the light to jam in place. Then, after the next cycle of the light the stripped gear with the broken teeth became obvious by the grinding noise.