For the last couple of months I have been having intermittent failure of my headlight motors in my 87 and 84 cars. I traced the 84 to insufficient ground for the motors but the 87 was being a real pain. Today I took the motors apart and here is what I found.

I replaced both gears from my spares stock and now all is well again.

Rolland

Ha ha that looks real familiar! Mine did the same thing..... Once in awhile it would have enough "momentum" to get it past the crack, but usually not, and it would go up no more than about half way.

Damage gear or output shaft goes w/ many Delrin and other hard pins/dowels.
OE pins are made to be weakest part and break before other things like above.

My guess the pins you have look new and have little or no wear. Even if you didn't install new pins other previous owners bought the hype.
Then you will likely have this problem again, gear teeth will break, and/or output shaft that open/close the HL lift will break.

see https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum2/HTML/128600.html

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Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
(Jurassic Park)

The Ogre's Fiero Cave