Help! headlight problem

[Ron Bogle]

I am new at this but here it goes
I just purchased my first corvette its a 1985 coupe with only 74000 miles and in very nice original condition, but heres the rub yesterday I close the hood and the drivers side headlight motor started running and the only way to shut it off was to unhook the power. My question is is this a normal thing and what do I do to fix it? I really don't want to just start buying things if someone out there has had this happen to them and they can help me out. Thanks for what ever you can tell me:confused

 

[Schrade]

Welcome onto the boards there...

There's a worm drive in the headlight motor, that makes contact when the gear has revolved to the stop point, at both ends. If no contact is made, the gear continues to spin.

The gear could be stripped, or, most likely, drive bushings inside the gear, that hold it into 'closed', or 'open' position, could have jarred apart.

 

[Ron Bogle]

thanks

OK at least now I know where to start I have had the motor apart on the other side, so I dont think I will have any problems, at least looking any way

 

[Schrade]

There's a sticky here for the headlight motor breakdown, and for motor wiring tests.

The wiring tests have pics; the motor breakdown pics got wiped from their servers - I still have the originals buried on my hard drive in another computer if you need them...

 

[Ron Bogle]

head light problem

Thanks but I think I can get it from here. I had to replace the passenger headlight last month and I found one in a junk yard and when I got it home I realized it was out of a newer model c4 and I had to change the drive shaft from my old headligth with the one I bougth from the junk yard and while I was doing that I saw the worm gear you told me about.