General Maintenance & Repairs - Alarm and Headlight Problem

I have a 2001 Formula. Every time I arm the alarm and lock the doors with the remote or hitting the lock button inside, the headlights pop up and the passenger headlight gets stuck and makes a weird noise for like 5 sec. or so.. The headlights also pop up when unlocked. Also when I turn on the parking lights on the headlights pop up, it never did before, until this started happening, and the passenger headlight gets stuck. (when I mean stuck, I mean that it closes but sounds like the motor is getting stuck.) Any ideas on how to fix this would be appreciated.

It's your actuator motor that raises the headlight door. One of the gears is stripped.

If you pull the stripped gear off and rotate it 180* and put it back on the problem will be gone until the other side strips.

Someone sells a set of brass gears to fix the problem if you search for them.

Here ya go:

Here's a link to the guy selling the metal gears:
http://www.bfranker.badz28.com/headlightfix/index.htm

Here's a doc about the nylon gear failures:
http://www.bfranker.badz28.com/headlightfix/index.htm#headlight%20gear%20failures

before you go pullin anything apart theres' an easyier way to "rotate" the gear 180*. just remove the nut that holds the headlight assy. arm ( the metal lever type thing)to the motor shaft of the motor assy. first pull the rubber boot off the top of the motor housing and lower the headlight slightly to take the tension off the gears. remove the nut. BEFORE you take the lever arm off the shaft make sure your holding the headlight or have it propped somehow (extra hands are a big help). once the lever is loose from the shaft, turn the knob to rotate the shaft 180* (untill you see the other side of the flat spots is a good way to tell you've gone far enough. Line the flat spot that was on the bottom or back of the shaft to the position the flat spot rotating to the bottom or back was at when you started) It's also a good idea to grab the motor assy (where you took the rubber boot off) and give it a good shaking ... does it wiggle? If so your main body is loose and chances are that the gear will strip fairly quickly on the other side as well.

Now if it's loose don't give up hope, you can take the headlight the rest of the way off (2 torx screws and nuts at the top of the headlight where it piviots) and remove the 3 bolts holding the motor on. with the motor off take some sort of punch or tool and a hammer and bend the 4 metal tabs down back into the "PLASTIC" body of the motor gear housind. I stressed the plastic as when I did myine I got a little over zelous and punched through with the punch and has to seal the hole with some silicon. if you scroll up in one of the links above it will have a writeup about the "free fix" which is what I tried to describe here

Thanks a lot guys im going to order me the gears soon, my friend also has the same problem so thanks a lot guys