i just rebuilt some gen 1 headlight motors with rodney's metal gear headlight kits.
left motor goes up and down fine, right one is sticking;
I have to turn the knob a few times before it moves on its own in either way. and goes up when power is off, and down when power is on...

thinking its the headlight isolation relay... maybe someone bought a regular headlight relay assuming it would perform the same as an isolation relay.

re-read the instructions rodney sent with the gears. I may have installed the magnet upside down. I'll find out later.

[This message has been edited by AL87 (edited 04-22-2013).]

Magnet installed upside down will do that, but could also be the wires feeding the motor crossed when you hooked things back up. I saw a post just last week where that had happened. Worth a look before you pull the motor out and apart to find out.

The motor will run in reverse if you put it back together with the windings rotated 180 degrees. Disassemble the motor, lift the internals out of the case and rotate the windings. That should fix it. Been there and re-done it a few times.

I checked the motor, it was a few pieces of the old gear wedged in the armature, somehow it got in there. idk...
ALSO for everybody's knowledge, there are tension springs that hold the magnets in place, one can only slide them on the armature one way as far as I saw. the armature cant get past the springs if put on the "wrong: way. unless the wrong way was which side of the magnetic case gets put on which side of the housing.

wiring was correct, I cleaned the grounds up and everything started working correctly. the left side however had to have my hand pound on the top of the wheel
(as per rodney's instructions) to get the motor to loosen up (took about 10 minutes of beating the top with my fist and manually turning it until the wheel started spinning without resistance and sticking)

sigh, these suck to work on, but are a little better understood in my mind compared to the gen 2 motors, with the whole tension set screw at the bottom with ball bearing. and the worst part about the gen 2 is figuring out how to hold the brushes back while you slide the armature back in the case. the gen 1 just kinda pops in place.)