Headlight motor
 

Hi guys,
On my ‘87 Corvette the driver side headlight motor stopped working. I read this is usually caused by the plastic gears being worn/broken, so I ordered the gears. I took the motor apart and sure enough the gears look just fine. I replaced the gears just in case, cleaned everything and put fresh grease in it. I installed the motor and it worked fine for about 15 times, then stopped again.
The motor runs when removed from the assembly but not when installed.
I can’t see or feel any binding or resistance.
Any clues?

Sounds like a bad motor to me with it not being able to handle the resistance from the weight of the light.

In the '84-'87 headlight motors, it's very important to have clean limit switches! They are easy to miss when you're inside the motor, but since the motor runs fine when you have the motor out of its housing, that would be my guess. The bushings on the motor shaft need to be lubricated with a light weight white grease, like LubriPlate or CRC StaLube.

(The headlights in bac22's '96 Corvette are a completely different design.)

:cool:

These 'limit switches', do they look like some sort of contact points? This was my first time working on a headlight motor so I wasn't sure what to do except replace the gears and clean everything. I will take a look again today.

Here's a link to a repair procedure for the '84-'87 headlight motors. The repair shown in the link is different than your problem, but pic #11 shows the limit switches.

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...placement.html

:cool:

Ok thanks

Should I clean these contact points and/or these parts that fit around the shaft? Any preffered way of doing this?

Ok, got it back together again. So far it's working fine. Keep my fingers crossed...

I lubed and cleaned mine about ten years ago. So far they're working fine. Keeping my fingers crossed.

:D