joseph p

My one headlight on the left side doesn't always go up all the way, I took a members advice and bought the fix from Mid-America. Could somebody tell me the steps to get to the gear where these are located? Thanks, MAD's instructions are not very helpfull. Thanks again.

MyBlueC5

The way I did mine last week was to remove the whole headlamp assy from the car.

Once removed, start to remove the electric motor from it's brackets. You'll have to remove the pivot bracket (stainless bracket connecting the motor to the lamp assy itself) Becareful as not to break the little plastic bushings at either end of the pivot bracket.

Once the motor is removed, undo the round plate on the backside noting where the correct spacers and washers go.

Pull the plastic gear from inside, clean it and surrounding recessed area and replace with new "pellets".

Check to make sure the gear itself isn't worn (they make a replacement one out of brass I think) Put some grease on the outside of the gear and reassemble.

Hope that helps. Since then, I have bought a service manual and if you need more specific directions, I could copy them and fax them to you.

Mark

jackdaroofer

:iagree: I didn't read the post in detail, but it souns like it will get you there

I haven't looked lately, but we used to have help topics archived on the forum and there were some reall really good step by step instructions there

Jack

joseph p

Do I HAVE to remove the whole headlight assembly?
Thanks

jackdaroofer

:D :jester Yes! Unless of course you can stand on your head and rember which way is lefty lucy :D

Take it out, it's simple, spread it on a nice cloth on a nice bench and take the tension out of the job

IMHO

:seeya

MyBlueC5

LOL... ROFLMAO

Lefty Lucy...lol. Yeah, wouldn't want to screw that up. Actually he's right, it's much easier to take the unit out and work on it in a clean open area.... that way you won't be hunched over and break your freakin' back leanin' over that damn tire...LOL.

Mark

chucks88

There are a couple good tech tips here to help walk you through it.

Jeffmete

I've done both of mine and had found an article in an old Corvette Fever that walked me through it. What I thought was weird, is the internal gears of mine were different between the left and right side. I also agree. Take the whole assembly out of the car first.

joseph p

By "whole assembly", do you mean headlight, door, motor, etc.???
Also, I've tried to do a search...wasn't able to find anything on this. Anybody know where I could look?
Thanks again!

Midgetfist

I replaced the bushings in my wifes '95 2 weeks ago, and the ones in my '96 this past weekend. Interestingly, the 2 cars were slightly different (mostly in mounting hardware). In both cars, only the passenger sides had turned to dust, while the driver sides were absolutely fine (still replaced them though). Although the driver sides were easier than the passenger (due to the reversed motor design, the nylon gears came out much easier), the '95 was easier overall. :crazy:

As the posted tech tip only partially applied for me, I took a ton of digital pics to accompany the tech tip I'm putting together.

Anyway, this mod/repair is relatively easy as long as you can spin a wrench, you take your time, and don't loose your patients (particularly with the nylon gear removal on the passenger side).

Midgetfist

YEP!

Here... https://www.corvetteforum.com/techti...D=16&TopicID=2

This tip will get you going, but they can vary so much between years. What year are you working on?


[Modified by Midgetfist, 1:04 PM 10/29/2003]

SPD DMN

I just started taking stuff off until I got to them ;).

It only takes 4 bolts as I recall to remove the whole headligth from the hood. Very simple. The rest of it I had to play with to get it apart, but it was failry easy and straight forward.

joseph p

OK...you were all right, disassembly and reassembly was fairly easy....except for one MINOR glich! Put it all back together and now the light just goes up a little and stops completely. I think I have the gear that lets you wind it by hand, out of sync...how do I get everything aligned at the right point? I can see the other lght-motor spinning to complete its job of opening the light while the newly-geared one stops. Thanks again and in advance.

RonJ

Check to make sure the gear itself isn't worn (they make a replacement one out of brass I think) Put some grease on the outside of the gear and reassemble.

What did you use for grease????? :confused:

joseph p

Didn't seem to need grease, had some on it still. I think it might have more to do with manual winder, but I will take it apart again and grease it. What type of grease should I use? Also if anyone has advice as to how I could synchrize the gearing when it's apart, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks

MyBlueC5

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong but if you assemble the motor, once you put the brackets back on, it should line up by itself since the brackets will force the motor on only one way.

If that doesn't work, plug the motor in (without having any brackets hooked up) and turn the headlights on and off. It will "park" the motor in the closed position.

I still think that you won't have to worry about it, I think it'll only bolt on one way.

Mark

joseph p

Can only hand-turn headlight up about 1/8 of the way...if I unplug both wire-plugs and turnknob in the other direction, it doesn't go REAL far and still only opens slightly when plugs are reconnected and lights turned on..