Headlight Gear Grinding

**Ant71130** · 05-20-2011, 08:22 PM

Ok so, I got a 2002 WS6. Mods, albeit minor, are in the sig. Its only got about 54k miles. I haven't done anything recent to warrant something going wrong. Just happened randomly when I stopped somewhere while out and about today.

Everytime from now on, when I flip my lights down, the driver side light goes down, but then sounds like it continuously tries to go down making this awful grinding sound that lasts about 4-5 seconds and then stops. The passenger one is completely fine. The driver side goes up without issue, and down without issue with the exception of trying to go down too far. I've tried with the car off, on, off but in run, I've taken the bezel and housing off and manually moved it up, I've manually moved it down and it all works fine, though to move it manually, it does take a few turns before it seems to "lock in.". I don't know if that's normal. When I had both lights up, and manually moved the driver side one down, I tried going in the car and flipping the switch off to move them down and it just immediately started grinding. It's always for the same length of time. I'm no mechanic yet, but it sounds like a sensor perhaps is going, are there any sensors that like, tell the light when it's down? But there's more.

One final issue is odd, to me anyway. Ever since this started happening, everytime I lock or unlock the car with the keyless entry, it makes both lights pop up, and then down again, causing more grinding. I'm pretty sure even when theyre both down and I simply press the lock button from inside the car, as soon as I shut the door it still does the same thing like it's connected somehow to the drl's that flash when you lock/unlock it.

I'm sorry for the long post, but I wanted to give as many details as possible to weed out stupid questions. I mean on that note, I checked the fuse too but that wouldn't matter anyway cause the problem is too much working, not 'not working' lol. Any help would be greatly, greatly appreciated. I didn't wanna dick with this for hours, I've been out all day since 8am and it's 12:22am now so >.>. Thanks guys. Hope it gets resolved.

~Anthony

**Knight** · 05-20-2011, 08:27 PM

It's actually a common problem on our cars. The gears are made of plastic, and they wear out. A cheap fix is to simply remove the gear and flip it over. It won't fix it for long though. You can either replace the gear with an oem plastic one, or upgrade to a brass gear. Many choose to do this so they never have to worry about it again.

Fix the gear, and you'll take care of both problems.

**wileyCoyote** · 05-20-2011, 10:43 PM

knight has it right. the motor/gearbox assemblies for these headlights suck... search the forum for the fixes knight mentioned...

what i do is i just leave them up permanently - i hate the flip up lights anyway, ...the main reason being the propensity for mechanical/electrical problems w/ em...

**Ant71130** · 05-21-2011, 07:07 AM

Originally Posted by Knight

It's actually a common problem on our cars. The gears are made of plastic, and they wear out. A cheap fix is to simply remove the gear and flip it over. It won't fix it for long though. You can either replace the gear with an oem plastic one, or upgrade to a brass gear. Many choose to do this so they never have to worry about it again.

Fix the gear, and you'll take care of both problems.

See, and I had heard about the crap design for them and the plastic/brass switch, I just didn't see how a gear becomming faulty would result in electrical issues that cooresponded with them as well. That's what kept me out of the loop. Appreciate it though fellas, sorry for the long assessment. I'll look up the how to, hopefully it's not a big issue for a DIY job. How much would I expect to pay, any clues?
Edit: About $43 dollars. And just judgin by the pictures I'm assuming this won't be very hard to do myself. Appreciate the help guys, I guess a search could have solved this. My apologies.