Headlight motor grind, only when going down.
Thread Starter
Staging Lane
Joined: Oct 2010
Posts: 65
Likes: 1
From: Fort Walton Beach, FL
Headlight motor grind, only when going down. When I bought my Trans Am both of the headlight motors would grind both going up and going down, I replaced the plastic gears with the alumninzed brass ones and they were fine for almost 4 months. I got home last night and when I turned the lights off it grinded. Its only the drivers side when going down, there's no way the brass gears could be stripping out already right? Or is there a maybe a switch that tells the motor when to stop that may have gone bad? The motor keeps turning for about 5-8 seconds after turning lights off.
Thread Starter
Staging Lane
Joined: Oct 2010
Posts: 65
Likes: 1
From: Fort Walton Beach, FL
Found out what it was, as a futurre reference to all who have these problems with their headlights, even if you have replaced the OEM plastic gears in the motors with brass or aluminum gears like I have there is a possibility they can still fail. When you take your motor out, you'll see that there are essentially two parts to it, the actual motor which is obviously metal, and the other plastic half which houses the gear. The motor is held onto the plastic half by four metal tabs, if any of those become slightly loose is will cause the motor to be able to move slightly upon the gear housing. If your motor is doing that you NEED to bang the tabs tighter to get rid of any slack because that slight misalignment will cause even the brass or alumninum gears to strip out eventually, which is what happened to me.
