I purchased and installed rodney dickmans headlight rebuild kit and they go up and down now but only when the hood is up. If the hood is down it seems like there is a lot of resistance with the headlight doors and they both only lift about 1/4 the way up. They also dont go down correctly when the hood is up, there needs to be a lot of pressure on them for them to go down, but i didnt know if that was normal or not.

bump, anyone know what the problem could be?

You might try taking the brush assembly out and making sure you have a good clean surface where the brushes contact the armature. If you have a poor contact surface it could cause the motor to run a bit weak.

Assuming everything is assembled correctly, and there are no electrical problems, about the only thing left is mechanical friction.

One of my light assemblies was incorrectly re-assembled by a previous mechanic, causing problems. One of the torque springs was also missing.

The door hinges aren't very sophisticated, or weather proof. Do you simply have a rust problem that's requiring lots of force to move the doors??? That should be easy to determine, if you haven't already. That would also kill your motors fast. I'd think the doors might want to stay open though, and you don't mention that.

I think it might be the doors. When i was working on it again today i noticed that when i turn the headlights on, it lifts the hood about 1/4 inch along with the headlight doors. They are very stiff to open manually too. Is this normal?

The tension springs on my headlight doors are fairly stiff. I would guess that about 10# of lift from the front section of the headlight door should be enough to open them. They do need to have some tension in order to counter the effects of rushing air into the radiator and front section while driving to prevent the doors from popping up while driving.

Try working some penetrating lubricating oil into the headlight door hinges. Push them up repeatedly until they feel free. Mine were very stiff when I got the car and this helped a lot.