Overlord!

Hey all. Was supposed to leave on vacation this morning but last night the driver's side headlight wasn't coming up.

No grinding.
Headlights on, but down.
Checked the fuse; good
Jumped the headlight control harness; Lt green/Dk green; got a single click.

Lights came up 2 days ago.
Washed the car yesterday; no actuator action on that side.

Can't even see a connector in all that mess to check for corrosion but I know it's either the connector to the harness resisting current thru corrosion, or the motor itself. Either one of which may have had it's fill of water yesterday.

So.......
How do I get to this damn connector which I can't see?
Is there a trick? A map? GPS coords?

If I can't get it up I'm going out of town anyway and cranking it up manually assuming I can get the damn cap off the crank. This year it's down in a steel hole and damn near inaccessible. If I can get the cap off, is it a hex headed deal? {another thing to pack}

Overlord!

Well, got the rubber boot off and packed a socket and ratchet the right size. Did some horrible night driving in the mountains in NM and luckily the light came up on it's own.
Now I'm in Durango CO and parking at the motel the lights gave me that standard grinding when they went down (which it hadn't done before).

I just don't see how that would be directly related to the previous problem.

Additionally, locking the car via remote brings the headlights up and on, then down and grinding. This is something new..... The headlights have never come up/on for the remote. It does flash the fog lights, but never the headlights. No doubt the folks whose room I was parked in front of appreciated that at midnight

Just slammed some 1400 miles on this new engine and IT is doing great. I'll be farther up into Colorado tomorrow, maybe AZ the day after, dunno. I had been hoping to make the long run thru upper Colorado looping down toward the TX panhandle in a couple days. Hopefully the lights will behave themselves.....

chemicalstylez

Well i hate to tell you its sounds like a gear issue now. If the headlights go up and down and grind while using the fob/remote, its more than likely a headlight gear.

Overlord!

Yeah, that's the truth.
Just seems strange that it wants to run the gamut of all possible headlight problems. Fixing to leave the motel; I'll see what it wants to do today. Looking at more night driving tonight/tomorrow. As long as the lights stay up and lit, it's all good until I get home to troubleshoot it.

...... maybe some holy water.....

chemicalstylez

Yea it'll stay up, its just grinding on the part of the gears that broke off...that loud *** noise is just the plastic getting chewed up

Overlord!

Yeah.... but..... turning on the running lights brings up the headlights now.
That never happened before. They stay off but they come up and stay up.

Whenever the alarm goes on or off, the headlights come up, stay off, and then go back down. THEN grind.
They never came up with the alarm before.

My son played with the lighter yesterday. Held the lighter in until it went to 9000° and blew the 25amp fuse. Found out this morning. Replaced the fuse because sometimes the odd unrelated electrical problem causes other effects.
No such luck. Lighter works now but the odd headlight stuff continues.

I can see how a bad gear would grind and/or keep the headlights from going up or down but I just can't see that a bad gear is going to force the headlights (both) to come up at odd times when they shouldn't.

Swiat34

iTrader: (9)

I thought the same thing. I even read the sticky about headlight problems and it didn't say much about it. However once I rotated the gear for the free-fix, it fixed that problem too. Apparently the car senses the current in the headlight motors anytime something happens with any lights. When the gear is bad, the motor won't have as much resistance and so the car activates 'headlights up.' I know, didn't make sense to me either. Maybe someone else can describe it better. All I know is fixing the gear fixes the "random headlight up" problem.


Swat

jag81

i am havin the exact same problem how do you fix this

TrakJunky

iTrader: (4)

Buy a new headlight motor from auto zone.. 70 bucks and lifetime warranty.

I speak from experience.

Danny2tek

iTrader: (1)

Have you read my sticky? Either do the temp fix, replace with a new gear, or just get a new motor as mentioned above.

y2k_ta

iTrader: (80)

Thank you! Everyone, do as he says!