Having owned my Fiero since new, having it as a daily driver for pretty well the whole time, including Canadian winters where the nights are longer, I knew the headlight motors were going to go on me. They worked fine until the brushes just plain wore out. I was not going to pay over $200 per motor from GM and the only person who sold the brush assemblies was Rodney Dickman. I tried fixing the original ones by having an electrical shop stick new brushes to the blades but they were unable to do it. I'm not sure what kind of adhesive GM and Rodney uses, but it works where others have failed. I tried metallized superglue with some success but it was not consistant. So I ordered 2 sets for the brush assemblies from Rodney Dickmans.
I installed one on the driver's side motor. The assembly went in perfectly and when the headlight assembly was mounted back on the car, it worked great! So I worked on the passenger side motor. It should be easier as you don't have to remove the motor from the headlight assembly to get at the brushes. Unfortunately, they did not go in as easily. Seems the fit wasn't quite right. After a bit of work, they got in and I put the entire unit back on the car.
Strange, going up was intermittent. It only went up when it felt like it. Going down worked fine. Touching the motor, it felt warm. Must be a short somewhere. I'll come back later to have another look. Later, the battery was dead. Totally dead. Even the interior light won't come on when I opened the door. I pulled the battery out, recharged it and pulled the passenger side headlight assembly off the car.
In my second attempt at reinstalling the brushes, I took a long hard look at the differences and to see if there was something in the contact switches that wasn't working. I found that Rodney improved the design by having two contact points on each side of the switches. My original ones only had one on each side. This redesign gave it more contact area as well as a backup contact if one of them failed. However, it also meant the blade that moved the switches on and off was also a bit wider and this caused the activation to have much closer tolerances. On my motor, when the motor hit the bottom of the headlight down position, the contact that should have disconnected clicked, but did not disconnect. So I found my short. This can be resolved by taking needle nose pliers and a small screwdriver and bending the blades ever so slightly upward so that the contact with the motor bumper that pushes down on the blade happens just abit earlier. A bit of fine tuning, if you will. I reinstalled everything and it works great.
I also hear good reports on Rodney's headlight motor rebuild kit. However, my motor gears are fine so didn't need it at this time.
So for those who jump to the last paragraph to read the conclusion, Rodney Dickman's headlight motor brush assemblies are an improvement over the original ones from my 85SE. However, with that improvement comes closer tolerances and when installing, make sure the contact points are adjusted to fit perfectly. Rodney has done the Fiero community a great service as GM stopped selling the brush assemblies a good 10 years ago.
