is anyone else tired of hoping their lights come up everytime you turn them on? i was wondering if anyone could give me some info on what it takes to convert the motorized headlights to the fixed ones? E.G. hardware, what lights to use, bodywork, is there a kit available etc. thanks!!!

You mean like bolted up or flushmounts?

Repairing the headlight motors is not that hard a job.
https://www.fiero.nl/cgi-bin/pfi.cgi
Rodney Dickman's Fiero Accessories
Sells the kit you need, order 2, the parts that fail are just as old on both headlights.
The repair might take 1 1/2 hrs the first time just to figure out things, 20 min for the second head light. This is a very very common repair on the fiero. There are 2 diferent headlight motors, Gen 1 and Gen 2, 87 & 88 are Gen2's
The rebuild kit, 3 plastic cylinders, work on both gens. A qiuck hunt through https://www.fiero.nl/ogre
Ogre's Cave will give you very good instructions on how rebuild this. The Instructions that come with Rodneys kit are top notch also. I mention Ogre's Cave because you can check out how to do this today rather than waiting for Rodney's kit to arrive. I'd say that 75% of PFF members have used Rodneys kit and would never recomend anything else, thats how good it is.
It's just my opinion that you might like living with working headlights a while before you face frustrations of trying a modification right off the bat. I'm not saying modifications are bad, I just think the stock flip up head lights are more in the style of the car we all have grown to love.
Welcome to the forum.

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Ol' Paint, 88 Base coupe auto.
Turning white on top, like owner.
Leaks a little, like owner.
Doesn't smoke, unlike owner

I had that trouble with my 85 ALL the time until I switched to the Gen. 2 headlight system. The gen. 2 system was used on the 87 and 88 fieros and also firebirds. Now I have no problems on my 85 OR my 88. This is a Very easy thing to do.

The front wiring harness unplugs at the front bulkhead to the upper right of the A/C accumulater/dryer. Remove a screw and remove the harness. "snake" the new harness into place where the old one was, attach the new relay module to the driver's inner fender, replace the headlight assemblies (8 bolts) and you have now found headlight happiness and your "hoping" days are over ! OK - there's a little more to do than that, but not much.

Check with member Paul Vargyas - I bought my set-up from him and I thought I saw that he had another one posted for sale recently.

If you have one of the early cars and wanna keep the gen. 1 system, member buddycraigg has that system All Figured Out and he's VERY good about helping, so you might contact him.

There is info and pics in the archives on the flushmount headlights that will probably turn up if you SEARCH on "flushmount" ....

[This message has been edited by PaulJK (edited 12-06-2006).]

yes, my 85 gives me occasional problems. with mine, the problem is the switches inside the motors - not the motors themselves. every so often, I need to manually crank up the pass side. I took the side cover off, and sprayed some contact cleaner in, and it helped for a little bit - but, actually pulling the motors, and cleaning the contacts for real is what mine needs. and, if I am pulling the motor - swithing to gen ][ would probably be what I do

Your thinking stationary lights that do`nt move? http://www.normsfiberglass.com/

I had a Firebird which gave me trouble every year, and then the Fiero, same story. I decided early on that I didn't want the complicated pop up system. I first made my own with driving lamps, and it worked well. However, the lights were not DOT approved and I could have a problem with safety checking the car. Also, my covers weren't molded so dust got washed into them every rain. I ended up not using the covers.

I since bought Kris Munson's setup, and it won't be installed for a while, however, it is absolutely first rate. The quality and design really quite good. It is the best $275 I've spent on the car. The car will have these lights on when it comes out on Groundhog Day.

Arn

hey thanks everyone! i didn't know the gen2 motors are better but thats good to know. i think i might use those until i come up with the money to get the flushmounted lights....since i didn't expect them to be 500 bucks. but i just wanted to say thanks!

on that not. I have an 88 fiero. Bad control module. I opened it up and found a bad transistor. So i went to the junkyard on the firebird interchange idea. I found two modules and bought both of them. Neither of them worked on my car although they tested fine. So i opened one up and noticed that they shared nothing with the fiero internals. I shouldnt say nothing because the pins lined up and the transistors were the same but other than that everything was different. So i took out the transistor i needed from one of the modules and put it in my module. now that side of the module works. But what i thought was a motor rebuild for the other side is now a diode replacement in the module. I can not find the diode that i need anywhere so I am back to square one needing a whole module. Has any one else here had similiar issues with the 91 firebird module not working on the fiero? I saw a guy on ebay selling one for a fiero/firebird but that does not seem right after what i have found.

hmmm i havn't tried anything crazy like that yet. the only thing i've really done is replace my whole headlight assembly with ones that were given to me by my dads friend who was doing a lambo conversion. but if i find anything out about the modules and such ill let you know.

I've NEVER heard that the control modules interchanged with the firebird, only the headlight motors {but you have to switch sides - use the right-side firebird motor in the left-side fiero headlight, etc.}

Still having problems with my left (D/S) headlight... it almost never comes all the way up. We're talking an '87 here with the Gen2. The system shuts the motors off when it detects a stall current (the motor stopped)... apparently it's detecting a stall before the light's all the way up! I have to flip the switch off-on, off-on, off-on a few times to get the light all the way up. Really annoying - and people probably think I'm flashing my lights at them.

Don't think a rebuild kit would help me... it's not gears or anything else like that to blame, it's either the module or dirty brushes

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'87 Fiero GT, Automatic, 153k miles, stock everything, just trying to make it all work again.
Shameless self promotion: PIP giving you problems? Check out http://hostfile.org!

I couldn't be happier with my Kris Munson (KMunson56) flushmount setup. They're pretty and they work great. Nothing better out there AFAIK.

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1986 GT 2.9L

'Cept that flush mount looks like crap.

I have the same problem with the control module on my 88 light with the partial opening. It is a diode inside the module that has gone bad. It is a 1N1421 diode which thanks to gm is really hard to find. The transistors that they used in these things have codes that by electronics standards mean nothing but since gm had the module made i assume they didnt want it to be that easy to fix. Plus i found out the hard way that a faulty relay can be a fire hazzard. Two fingers burnt cripy be a bad transistor. Lots of smoke an @#!!!**

Here's the interchange for p/n 16523917 according to GMPartsDirect. Note that there are errors like the 84 - 88 Fiero application. I doubt the module was used anywhere before 1987 (edit maybe on 86 Sunbird?). Also makes it look like two modules are needed when there is only one. The module design likely changed several times over the years but all should be plug compatible.

[This message has been edited by spark1 (edited 12-14-2006).]