Headlight problems

[Mach83]

I went on a road trip this past weekend and brought the car. Great time. I come back home. I get out and hit the lock button on my key chain. All the sudden the flip headlights go up, back down, and i hear a motor grinding. I can assume it's the headlight motor for the flip headlights. now it does that all the time when ever the car gets unlocked, locked, or if i close the headlights. It's a aweful grinding sound for about 6-7 sec and then stops. I tryed disconnecting the battery for a time to try to reset the computer but nothing. Anyone experience this? It's a 99 WS6. Thanks for the help.

[brothapig]

I had the same problem with my headlights, and I believe that it is pretty common. The headlights are electric motor driven, with a worm gear on a larger gear. The larger gear sometimes strips out. The remedy is to change out the motor. (The motor and gearbox is one unit, at least on the '96) The other option, and the one I chose, due to a new unit being about $200, was to take apart the motor/gearbox. The travel required by the headlight to go up and down is about 3/4 of the large gear. The large gear is indexed using pins, and can be rotated in 90 deg increments. Simply rotate the gear so the stripped out part is in the area that is not being used. It's a cheaper way to go, but it is not a permanent fix. They do make brass gears now. By the way, it's probably only going to be one headlight that is doing this, so you will only need to do one (for now anyway). Good luck.

[Mach83]

Thanks for the help. How much do the brass gears go for. I'd like to only fix it once. The car only has 32,000 miles on it. so this may be the beginning of ongoing headlight probs. Thanks again.

[LarryMow]

Ive had the same problem before and fixed mine myself with the bronze gear mentioned in the last post. I think I paid something like $40 or 45 bucks for the gear with shipping. Comes with the gear, instructions, and expoxy. Heres the link to the gear and the how to guide. http://www.bfranker.badz28.com/headlightfix/