A couple of nights ago, I went to use the headlights on my 2004, and the drivers side unit did not come up. The first time I've had such an issue. Drove home with one light, pulled into the garage, and tried turning them off and on a few times, same result. Opened the hood, looked at the light, and noticed a boot on the end of the motor unit. Took it off, tuned the manual **** counterclockwise and the light wouldn't raise. I turned both directions, and turned, and the headlight would not come up.

Went and turned on the light switch again, and voila, up came the light. Curious, so I turned off the headlight switch and the light went down, BUT, a loud grinding noise presented itself for about 5 seconds. Tried several more times and the same exact scenario, headlight up, headlight down, grinding noise. Turns out the **** that you use to manually operate the headlight is spinning at a high rate of speed after the light is down.

Could this be a limit switch malfunction? I assume that there has to be a travel limit switch in the circuit somewhere. I would say gears, but it seems to work perfectly now except for the grinding noise at the end. There is no noise when it goes up, and I have tried rotating the manual **** to both ways with the same result. Oh, and the manual **** will now bring up the light.

Any help will be appreciated!

 

You have a stripped gear in the headlight motor. I am very surprised to see this in a 2004 model!

Rodney Dickman sells replacement gears (and all parts necessary) to rebuild the gears in these motors. years 2000 & greater are a bit more of a challenge but with good parts and instructions it is not difficult at all.

In any event I have included a website for your convenience.

Good Luck!



http://www.rodneydickman.com/retail_new.html

 

Good advice, I have replaced one on my C5 using Rodney's gear.

There is another, all metal gear, BFRANKER, look in sticky, "the ultimate DIY thread" at top of this page. Here is the link to his,

http://www.bfranker.badz28.com/headlightfix/index.htm

 

Thats what You got!! Stripped gear. I would change out both of them if I were You. I used Rodney Dickman parts and am well pleased.

 

Rodney's gear kit is needed.

 

Thanks, I was afraid of that. Thought it might be a limit switch since I could get it to work. Guess its time for some brass gears to replace those cheapass nylon ones GM chooses to give us. Who would have thought that this issue would appear in an 04 with less than 40 K on it.