some may know this, some may not. i dunno.
my headlight motor was making this grinding sound, and would do so even after the headlight was down. i got a price on new motors and it was too expensive, so i took apart the motor, and found that a tooth on the gear was missing. i rotated the gear 180 degrees, put it back toghether and on, and it runs like new.

That is a good tip, but if you need a new gear you can get them from Rodney Dickman.

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Good find! It is not a new one, but shows that as a Fiero enthusiast, you're on the ball. Anybody that replaces the gear with only half of its life expired is wasting money. Happy Holidays

It may not be a "new" tip, but you discovered it yourself, and took time to share it with us. That's what makes this forum work!

So, the gear only really uses half its teeth, eh? Okay, so I already knew that, but I bet not everyone on the Forum was "cog"nizant of that Thanks for sharing, and Merry Christmas !

quote Originally posted by StuGood: It may not be a "new" tip, but you discovered it yourself, and took time to share it with us. That's what makes this forum work! So, the gear only really uses half its teeth, eh? Okay, so I already knew that, but I bet not [b]everyone on the Forum was "cog"nizant of that Thanks for sharing, and Merry Christmas ! [/B]

Pretty close, the gear uses something like 90% of the teeth, usually in most cases ony 2 or 3 teeth break off the gear.

Turning the gear 180% seems to put the gear where the bad teeth aren't used.

I've talked with several people that sometimes more teeth break off making it totally useless.

I've done this repair to numerous motors, and to date the most I have seen break is 4 teeth.

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I've heard many different ideas on how much of the gear is used. I can't say I know for sure how much it truely is. The gears fail at the stopping points. If you take the cast arm off the motor shaft and turn the motor 180 degrees and put it back on it most likely puts the start/stop areas on the gear in a new position which will make the motor assembly (gear) last a lot longer. This is easy to do as you do not have to drill out the rivits. How many do it? I think most wait until the gear is stripped out.

This is new information to me. I am just getting into Fieros. I bought two, an 87, and an 86. I rebuilt both motors on the 87 (different style) and was preparing to to the same for the 86. I will try the 180 method first. Thanks!

quote Originally posted by ordovician: some may know this, some may not. i dunno. my headlight motor was making this grinding sound, and would do so even after the headlight was down. i got a price on new motors and it was too expensive, so i took apart the motor, and found that a tooth on the gear was missing. i rotated the gear 180 degrees, put it back toghether and on, and it runs like new.

the motor on my 84 rotates the plastic gear 270°, 3/4 of a revolution, to go from full down to full up.

I tried the 180° rotation, it just moved the bad spot from the full down position to the almost up position, where the motor would run and the light would vibrate as the gear chewed away more teeth.

my gear was really badly chewed, I figure that anybody who has got the 180° flop to work has a gear with enough tooth stubs left to let it get past them into the still good teeth for the stopping torque.
mine did not.

( there were only like 4 teeth missing, but they were TOTALLY gone. )