[JamesMcCaffrey]

The car: 91 Stealth R/T

The issue: For the past month, the passenger's side pop-up headlight has been... "stubborn" I guess? Not broken 100% of the time. But broken around 20%. When I start it early in the morning (6AM-ish), sometimes I have to flick the lights a couple of times before the passenger's side headlight pop ups out of the bucket. Both lights come on, but the motor on the passenger's side doesn't always want to work. It's happened about 3 different mornings within the past month.

Last week, I had the exact opposite problem. When I started the car up, both headlights opened just fine. But when I was pulling into the parking lot at work 20 minutes later, I switched the lights off and the passenger's side lamp wouldn't go back down. I ran over a small bump in the parking lot just before I parked, and THEN it went down by itself. I've run the car a few times since then and the lights were both working.

But then this morning, the passenger's side light wouldn't come up at all. I must of tried 4-5 times all the way to work, but it wouldn't move an inch. Later in the morning (around 10AM), I went out with a co-worker who does a lot of DYI electrical stuff. We wanted to figure out where the manual override was to keep the lights always up. I started the car, flipped the switch for the headlights, and both lamps popped straight up without delay. Huhh?

My mechanic is going to look at it on Tuesday, but I'm stumped. I'm thinking it's a wiring issue somewhere rather than just the motor slowly dying. Could anything else be causing it somehow? Temperature? Moisture?

 

[jrhorne]

The car: 91 Stealth R/T

The issue: For the past month, the passenger's side pop-up headlight has been... "stubborn" I guess? Not broken 100% of the time. But broken around 20%. When I start it early in the morning (6AM-ish), sometimes I have to flick the lights a couple of times before the passenger's side headlight pop ups out of the bucket. Both lights come on, but the motor on the passenger's side doesn't always want to work. It's happened about 3 different mornings within the past month.

Last week, I had the exact opposite problem. When I started the car up, both headlights opened just fine. But when I was pulling into the parking lot at work 20 minutes later, I switched the lights off and the passenger's side lamp wouldn't go back down. I ran over a small bump in the parking lot just before I parked, and THEN it went down by itself. I've run the car a few times since then and the lights were both working.

But then this morning, the passenger's side light wouldn't come up at all. I must of tried 4-5 times all the way to work, but it wouldn't move an inch. Later in the morning (around 10AM), I went out with a co-worker who does a lot of DYI electrical stuff. We wanted to figure out where the manual override was to keep the lights always up. I started the car, flipped the switch for the headlights, and both lamps popped straight up without delay. Huhh?

My mechanic is going to look at it on Tuesday, but I'm stumped. I'm thinking it's a wiring issue somewhere rather than just the motor slowly dying. Could anything else be causing it somehow? Temperature? Moisture?

My car has been like this for about 7 years lol. I now just keep the headlights flipped up permanently by keeping the button by the gauge cluster pressed on. I was in the exact same boat where sometimes only 1 would go up, then after a few tries both would go up, then sometimes one would stick up, etc. I got tired of flipping them on and off so many times and got accustomed to the "up" look so i leave them up now.

As far as diagnosing, if it is different headlights that get stuck each time, it could be the actual switch in the car; at least thats what i was told. It didnt really make sense to me though, because i thought that would just signal both headlights at the same time. You can also try the manual adjustments under the headlights to make sure they are adjusted correctly (bottomed out when down, etc).

 

[JamesMcCaffrey]

It's always the passenger's side on my car. I've had it for exactly three years at the end of this month and never had issues with the lights before. Then this headlight started acting funky about a month ago.