help me see the light as my haynes manual doesn't cover thigns well enough to explain the problems I am seeing.

Unexplainably...a week ago my pass-side light failed to go down. After fiddling with it.....I just left it up for the day. Nothing was binding, no motor sounds, no gear sounds, no signs of excessive corrosion, etc.

After a few nights of trying to diagnose the issue (using this site as part of my reference)...I found a few things.

When checked....both terminals going to the motor showed 12v. Weird, at least to me.

At no time...when the headlight failed to rise or lower (intermittent) was there ever a sound from the motor or the gears (the typical problem). I checked for binding each time and never found anything.

SO...is the possible problem the headlight motor controller a possible suspect and if so...how can I diagnose that...? I wish it were showing the signs of the gear problem so I could simply purchase a gear from Brent and be over with it.

BTW. I did the free fix last night...just for giggles. Result = same symptoms. I did this fix to the driver's-side two years ago and it's still going strong. the passenger side motor....when it doesn't move....doesn't make a sound...nothing. I've had three different people check it out for me just so I'd not think I was nuts (I am, but that is a different story).

TIA.

 

ttt

 

I am having the exact same problem with my 96 Firebird 3.8 and it's even with my passenger side light as well. My head light is in the up position and won't go down. There is no grinding noise which I have had in the past on the driver's side headlight(which has also been replaced). The motor doesn't click or nothing. I've checked my fuse(in the fuse box under the hood) and it's not blown or damaged. It's almost as if the motor isn't receiveing power. Oh, and I even tried Brents fix but it made no difference. Anyone have any ideas?

 

is the motor hot? mine was ****ed up, and that lil thing would try to run all the time, and i wouldnt hear any noises, but it heated up real quick, and even melted the lil plastic piece on top of the motor that lets you put it down/up manually. speaking of that. have you tried to put it down manually? if you try to lower it with the ****, and you feel the motor running agaisnt you, then you now know its on all the time. in response the your statement about the 12v thing, i tested mine when it was ****ed up and it came out the same (i think). what you need to do to see how its supposed to work, is goto the store, and buy a test light. then disconnect the working motor, and use the test light to see when that motor gets power and on what terminals. there was a thread somewhere that described how the motor actually worked. and i dont think it would be the switch itself thats causing the one to stay up. but if you want to check it, youre going to have to disconnect all the wires from the back of the switch on the interior of the car, which is relatively easy, you just pop off a few things, and voila. and then go under the hood and test the voltage again. im pretty sure there was always a constant 12v to my motor as well. if you want, ill go check on it. just lmk.

chris

 

A friend of mine has this exact same problem in his '99 T/A. The passenger side light is up and there is no noise coming from the motor, no twitch at the shaft, no binding ... nada. We swapped out the headlight control module (which takes 5 seconds) and it didn't help.

If you want to check the control module, it's the thin black box with 2 connectors, mounted to the side of the fuse box under the hood. Find another Firebird and swap the box. It just clips in, no tools required. But, I doubt it will help.

The GM design is a goofy one. There is no limit switch to tell the headlight motor when to turn off. So, it runs until the headlights lock in position, at which point the motor starts to overload. The system senses the overload and shuts off the power to the motor.

So, in the most basic sense, you're burning up your motor every time you turn your lights on or off.

My bet? The headlight motor is shot. I had to replace one on my car. Check eBay and look for a lady down in Florida. She sells refurbs for $80. That's what I'm running on my car now, along with Brent Franker's brass gears) and have no problems.

 

While it doesn't seem like it is jammed, it probably is.

Does it work immediately after using the manual **** to take off the tension? If so, most likely it is jamming in place A quick fix for this that usually works is to put a piece of thick rubber hose/tubing over the raise/lower arm stops. There are two stops down in there... one for the raise position and one for the lower position. By placing a thick piece of rubber hose on there (of the proper diameter so it fits snugly) what you have done is effectively increased the diameter of the stop. By increasing the diameter of the stop, the light stops sooner and is less likely to get jammed.

Cost to try the above should be less than $0.25 so it's cheap enough to give it a shot