ok seems like my driverside headlight motor is doing the typical "grind" after
being closed, it lasts for about 5 seconds after I turn off the lights, another
thing is when I flip on the headlight to the middle position, where the
headlights are supposed to stay closed and the foglights are supposed to
only turn on, the headlights will flip open but will not turn on.

All of this began happening after a friend of mine sprayed some water in my
engine bay trying to help me clean it, yes I know he's a dumbass and he
promised to pay for any parts that I need to replace. don't ask my what he
was doing with a hose under my hood, luckily the opti is still
good lol

I was wondering if this sounds like a headlight motor failure, but I was
thinking couldn't neccesarily be because both headlights are doing the
weird "flip up when not supposed to thing" so I'm think some kind of control
module is messed up and is incorrectly sending a signal to the headlight
motors

 

Mine have been grinding for 3 years. And my lights pop up in the middle position and do no illuminate. But my parking lights do come on. It's because mine wasn't equipped with DRL's. It may be the same for you too. if it's bothering you a lot, wire in a seperate switch for the h/l motors to turn them off.

 

well problem is it never did that until now

 

Then it's the switch or the module.

 

Sounds like the stripped gear. Search for "headlight fix".

 

my drivers side has been doing that for over a year and when that started i know longer could have my parking lights on without the lights coming up i hate it ....nothing to do with washing the engine since i have done mine a few times since i am a detailer ....but i am very careful of the opti so i never soak it just get it cleaner ...just with age i think the lights will fail it sucks ..

 

guess it was just a bad coincidence, motor is shot!

 

http://www.bfranker.badz28.com/headlightfix/index.htm

There is a free fix if you scroll down and if you have done the free fix before, like I have for each side then you will need new gears in the headlight motor...

 

did u have to clean out all the old grease or did u just leave the old **** in there?? i rotated my driver one recenty and found 3-4 teeth on that gear all the way off

 

I just did the rotation trick without even removing the motor, took about 5 minutes total to fix...

 

Ditto.
If you're seeing grease, your doing more work then needed.

 

Once you stop the terrible grinding noise the lights will go back to working properly and not go up/down when they shouldn't. Dealers will often try to trick you into buying a new module but trust me, that won't fix it

Read #3 here...
http://www.bfranker.badz28.com/headl...htgearfailures