Can anyone give a suggestion as to how to fix my passenger light not working correctly.

Both ds and ps have brass gears and MOTORS both work just fine however if I turn on the lights the drivers side pops right up....... passenger side does not.

If i got and pop hood and turn the manual adjusted even a $%^& hair it will work just fine.

when turning off they always both go down no issues. The next time i go to use them sometimes it will work just fine with both however most times it does not.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

I have had this problem before, and I still do! I don't know if the headlight control module suffers from "farts" every now and then and it fails to recognize one of your headlights, but you need to play with them, OR, because you used metal gears, they are being over-torqued and thus they are stuck in the up or down position. Allow me to give you a procedure to follow:

You turn on your headlights and one of the two pops up while the other remains in the down position.

1.) Turn off your headlights to lower the raised one back down. Now, simply turn your headlights back on and see if both respond and lift up together.

2.) If after at least three tries your headlights are not both raising up, turn off your headlights to lower them back down. Pop your hood and manually raise the one headlight that was not popping up. Raise this headlight all the way up until the **** can not turn anymore. Now, go back and turn on your headlights. Both should now be raised. Now turn the headlights off and on and cycle them to ensure both will now raise and lower, which they should now be able to do. You may need to fiddle with them again after you shut your car down, test cycle them for a day or two and see how they act.

3.) You have tried the second step but after test cycling the headlights, the one headlight that would not raise will now either not lower back down or it will not raise itself again, or the other headlight is now acting up. Here you will have to play with manually raising or lowering the headlight that was not working and unplug it before trying the cycle process again. With the headlight manually raised or lowered and unplugged, turn on your headlights and now plug it back in. The headlight should automatically raise or lower itself. Now try to cycle the headlights at least three times to see if they will now both lower and raise together. If the headlights raise and lower together, hopefully the problem is solved for now. You may need to fiddle with them again after you shut your car down, test cycle them for a day or two and see how they act.

4.) If your headlights are still not raising or lowering together, or for some reason that one stubborn headlight is not raising or lowering itself after these manual adjustments and unplugging, you need to make sure both headlights are in the lowered position, and your last resort will have to be resetting your computer by first unplugging the negative battery terminal followed by the positive battery terminal, and waiting at least 30-minutes before reconnecting the battery. After enough time has elapsed, plug the battery back in and test the headlights for synchronized operation. If this does not solve the problem, try disconnecting the troublesome motor and detach it from the headlight lifting arm. Manually spin the gear 180-degrees and then reattach the headlight lifting arm. Plug the motor back in and see if this adjustment helped at all!

(For those who are ****, anytime you unplug the battery your PCM must relearn the IAC position. You have to perform the IAC relearn procedure. This procedure is available on-line, I use the procedure listed in a repair-manual.)

5.) If step four does not solve the problem, it may be time to see a specialist and get their opinion!

 

Thanks.

They worked just fine for years and hence now you know what i want to drive it off cliff sometimes lol

will give this a try this weekend.

 

This is a classic example of a stripped gear. Yes, the metal ones strip, too: https://ls1tech.com/forums/stereo-el...ght-doors.html


It could also be a balky module. But first, I'd test to make sure it isn't the gear. If it's the module, you should be able to open the hood and tap on the module to get things to work. If that makes the motor move, then you'll know its not the gear. We have a fix for the module now: https://ls1tech.com/forums/pontiac-f...l#post19594997

 

The modules aren't this complex or "smart". If you look at the schematic linked above, they run off of a simple IC and relays. They will self-reset. The only way one light will stay up and the other down is if a motor has a stripped gear or if it isn't getting power through a wire/connector or the module.

 

Eh, it was over-torquing of the metal gear on the one motor I modified. Even today the one headlight motor will stick and not lift up when I turn on the headlights. I turn it off and then flip them back on and the motor lifts up. I had to screw around with manually raising and lowering, unplugging after manually raising and lowering, resetting the battery and then finally unhooking the lifting arm from the motor and manually spinning the gear 180 degrees to a new set of teeth and then trying the motor with better results and occasional sticking.

 

Are you sure you don't just have a stripped metal gear like I did? ^ This fix would be consistent with that. I've never heard of a motor sticking - the typical problem is that the motor pulls away from the gear case and doesn't engage well enough.

 

The metal gear wasn't stripped on mine. The only stripping that happened was when I improperly attached the shaft to the metal gear, I didn't hammer it in all the way and during engagement I heard a very different metal-on-metal grinding. It wasn't enough to break the teeth but it did wear them down a tad.

So, when you quote my fix suggestion of rotating the gear 180 degrees, this was not the result of a stripped gear, as you so adamantly claim! It was a desperate attempt to find a solution to make my motor with this metal gear work properly!

Now, I know for certain the motor was over-torquing because there is a plastic tab on the headlight housing meant to stop the lift arm, connected to the gear shaft, from continuing to rotate the gear. When I popped the hood to check it out, on those days the headlight was not going back down, the manual **** was so damn tight I had to use both hands to crank the headlight back down! After my 180 degree rotation fix, it doesn't get stuck in the up position, but on some days it won't raise with my other motor, which is still using the plastic gear.

 

This is still weird. I'm wondering if you might have an intermittent issue with your headlight module. It has circuitry that senses when the motor has reached the stops. (The plastic covers that the arms door arms engage at the top and bottom of the motion.) When that sensing happens, the module cuts power to the motor. If the power isn't cut... the motor will jam as you are describing. (It shouldn't have anything to do with the motor or the gears.)

If you experience this again, you might try flipping the motors side-to-side. If the problem stays on one side and doesn't follow the motor, that will confirm a module issue.

 

The problem could just be that I am using a non-factory metal gear instead of the plastic gears, which the system was designed for. There is a reason why the plastic gears keep on stripping and yet they don't bind up the motors resulting in stuck headlights in the up or down positions. The price you pay for metal gears is the headaches of sticking headlights, but it is easy to cure after you play with them and get them to work most of the time. When they stick, cycle the headlights and usually they will work. That is my experience now.

 

Thinking some are confused on the issue.

When i first start car.... I go to turn on lights (Rarely driven let alone at night)

The drivers side always pops up....passenger side not always. I can go turn the manual thing to turn up and it works just fine (as in use my allen key and turning even 1/64") and it pops right up on its own.

I do not think there is ANY gear issue as it works just fine for say the rest of the day or me turning lights off and on. The next time i go to drive car ...say a week later..it may or may not come up.

Hence my confusion. I am leaning more towards maybe I should give:
2.) If after at least three tries your headlights are not both raising up, turn off your headlights to lower them back down. Pop your hood and manually raise the one headlight that was not popping up. Raise this headlight all the way up until the **** can not turn anymore. Now, go back and turn on your headlights. Both should now be raised. Now turn the headlights off and on and cycle them to ensure both will now raise and lower, which they should now be able to do. You may need to fiddle with them again after you shut your car down, test cycle them for a day or two and see how they act.

as the only thing I did different was pull assembly out on passenger side to "check connection" for water and to use dielectric in connection. I remember testing it with assembly sitting on core support and it work just fine however i also remember manually adjusting to lower/ raise and not sure if that confused system.

I also adjusted the stop? that allows the lid to be flusher with hood as when i bolted back in place it was not in exactly the same location as before.

Thanks again for the thoughts etc. Will try this weekend.

 

This is exactly what can happen when you have one bad tooth on the gear.


If you have a snaggletooth on your gear, you could get intermittent behavior, but that doesn't mean that it's 100% a gear issue.

There is a failure mode where it could be the door module. To check that the next time this happens - look to see if the headlight is on with the door shut. Then tap the headlight door module.

If the light is off, you probably have a problem at the motor connector.

If tapping the headlight door module causes it to work, then you could have the cold solder joint problem in the module.


The other thing to do would be to have someone stand at the light when its acting up. Have them put their hand on the motor and feel if its running when you try to open the doors. If it runs and the door doesn't move, then you know it's a gear problem.

 

When the headlight sticks, did you turn the headlights off and then turn them back on to see if both headlights would raise together? My car does the same thing once in a while, only my driver side headlight sticks while the passenger side is the reliable motor. Since the brass gear is in the driver side motor and my passenger motor still has the plastic gear in it, I figured it has to be an issue with using a non-plastic gear. The driver side headlight goes up after the second try, after all the messing around I did to get it to work most of the time. This is why I gave you my "to-do list".



I have messed with my headlights plenty of times before I installed the brass gear, I have even farted around with raising one half-way and THEN turning on the power to raise them both. I had the head lights acting bizarre one time where one would lift while the other would close and I could repeat this! So, I messed with raising them both half-way while cycling them and I managed to sync them up. So, again, the headlight system is screwy and that is why I stress that you take a little time to play around with it. It can be stressful but you can fix it!

I need clarification, do you mean the HOOD stop? I have played with those to try to flush up the headlight covers, but you also could loosen up the back screws on the top cover and push down or lift up on whatever side needs adjusting and THEN tighten away!

I hope you don't mean you altered the plastic housing headlight lifter arm stop?!

 

I had a similar issue where the passenger headlight would only go up or down whenever it felt like it. So i had to go out and manually raise it myself. It wasnt often, but nonetheless it did occur. However, mine wouldnt go down sometimes. So i replaced the motor and never had that problem again.