LH headlamp motor hot and sticky

[dancroft1984]

Hi all,
My left headlamp seems to have a big issue. Both lamps come up at the same time, but only the right one goes down. I went to manually retract and found that it was burning hot and a few turns of encouragement on the manual winder made it go down on its own. It was very stiff and squeaky (but wasn't a couple of weeks ago, it worked fine then, reluctant relays aside)
Any ideas of a fix/replacement/conversion to something else?

The car is a 1985 with the old Lucas motors.

[Gray14]

Hi Dan, Just posted a reply (twice) to the above on Hedge fund Blog page 6.

[DavidOliver]

You must investigate the stiffness as otherwise you can burn out the motor, or as minimum flatten your battery.
Check the free moement of the headlamp pod, pivots, if the pod does not close entirely current is left flowing.
If your bonnet is not fully closed you can get interference between bonnet and pod.


Dave the cog

[Jason.goad]

Don't be tempted to wind the allen key stud all the way into the pod. The headlight pivots on this so it needs movement. The headlight pod should move freely. Then the lock nut pinches the body to stop it unwinding. Grease always helps.

[dancroft1984]

Just took the motor apart. The pod and Lift/relay mechanism are fine. The armature itself is stiff to rotate in the housing and is quite dirty and contaminated.
I've taken it apart and will give it a thorough clean and lube this weekend. I also snapped the shaft where the manual lift knob shaft goes into the armature inside the casing. So I have to superglue that in and hope for the best, otherwise I'll be trying to convert to mx5/MR2 motors.

[dancroft1984]

Just to complete this, there was still too much friction. I could just about get it to work on the bench but no joy when installed.
I did buy some cheap MR2 motors, but then a complete TR7 assembly came up on eBay, so I replaced like-for-like.