A while back my '85SE headlight motor kept spinning when I turned the lights off. Someone told me to take the unit apart and flip the gear over - i searched the archives and found similar suggestions.

this weekend I finally got around to it - took the assembly off the car - took the motor off the assembly - drilled the rivits out to open the motor assembly up

and what I discovered is the plastic gear IS only used on one side

BUT you dont have to open the motor to 'flip' the gear around. There is an arm on the shaft the gear attaches to.

All you need to do is take the arm off the shaft (without opening the motor up) and put it back on 180° from where it was. you will then need to spin the motor by hand to get the arm pointing back where it was, but now you have the unused teeth inside the motor assembly engaging the metal gears.

Will save you lots of time. When the other side gives out, now I will know what to do.

there is nothing inside the motor assembly that reaches one end or another - if you power the motor up when its not attached to the headlights, it will spin around and around all day long - so all you need to do is reposition the arm that attaches to the headlight assembly.

one thing I forgot to mention - when you take the arm off the motor assembly, use a pair of vice grips on the arm and loosen the nut while holding the vice grips - dont try to loosen the nut and expect the motor to hold the arm - you will strip out the plastic gear inside.

It also looks to me like the design is vunerable to force applied to the headlights when they are up - there is enough leverage there (unless Im missing something) that - if someone were to push your headlight down I think it would strip the plastic gear right out of the motor assembly.

The motor has a worm gear on it - you cant back spin a worm gear - something would have to give (strip out / break)

would this work if my headlight is weaka nd unable to lift all the way up ?

flipping the arm gets you new (unused) teeth on the plastic gear inside.

the way the motor stops when it gets to the end is pretty clever - the worm gear on the motor loads up when the headlight meets resistance, and the motor is along the axis of its shaft, which hits a switch that breaks the motor circuit.

So if your headlight doenst go all the way up, then its either because something is putting too much force on the motor, and it thinks it hit the end of travel and the switch opens

or your motor is partly burned out - in which case, the switch would not open and the motor would be on all the time when the headlight is up (not good)

or its possible the gears inside are all gummed up (the grease gets hard after a long time) and they need to be cleaned and regreased.

Moving the arm is what you do if the motor keeps spinning when the lights are all the way up or down. Check and make sure the headlite goes up and down without resistance - maybe your assembly is messed up somehow (something in there? a rag or something?

If the headlite assembly moves smoothly then you could try flipping the arm over - maybe the gear is chewed up - if it doenst work then take the assembly apart and see whats wrong in there.

If the motor jams rather than strips, you probably want to disassemble and rebuild it. These motors have a green flexible "bumper" to provide a cushion between the gear and the actuator shaft. Over time the bumper degenerates into crumbs which can clog the gear teeth, jamming the motor. Rodney's kit includes the bumpers; alternatively, solid metal gears eliminate the bumpers, at some cost in shock load.