1997-2004 Head Light Motor Fix
Transcript.
Normally when I have a bunch of jobs at the same site coming in one week it reminds me to talk to you guys about what causes the fault that brings the occur in the first place why it happens and the easiest way to fix it so catch me over at the other part of the shop and I'll show you what that's all about we're going to be talking about see pie headlight motors today [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] hey everybody let's talk about those c5 headlight motors okay two things you have to understand right to the get-go they use two different designs of headlight motor in the 97 204 model year run so you have the full metal body headlight motor similar to the one used 88 to 96 in the sea floors this one the cap screws down it's held in place with bolts and the metal motor bolts to the metal housing very strong very heavy 97 through 99 Corvettes used this motor then in 2000 they switched to a smaller lighter motor it has the metal body still the metal motor put the body of the day of actual gear housing is plastic and that causes some additional problem which is why the kits used to rebuild these motors are different now let's talk about failure points okay inside each of these motors is a plastic gear with a rubber insert flexible looks like this this metal shoutout test four prongs that go into one of each of these holes and that's what locks this mechanism in and makes it turn there is a worm gear that runs through this shaft and runs on the edge of this gear the problem is over time these little precise holes in the rubber wear into great big sloppy holes in the rubber which means instead of this moving precisely it can shift when the motor is actuated your headlight what that causes is it starts letting the worm gear cause it divot right here you see those missing teeth and all of a sudden now instead of your headlights going up and down smoothly they go up smoothly but when they come down you get that bird sound at all Corvette owners know now to fix that not terribly difficult but there are two separate kits for the earlier 97 to 99 model you just have replacing a gear the replacement rubber and a replacement quart gasket you can see the edge of that quart gasket right there that seals this when you have it apart this is not difficult we should we actually are going to do a video on how to do this job in the relatively near future because and more and more people are doing their own headlight motors on those cars skipping back to the 2000 to 2004 motors no gasket because the plastic body has this cap here that is actually glued in place from the factory so when I go in to rebuild this I'm actually going to go in there with a screwdriver and break that gooey contact all the way around this pops off and falls away great easy access here's the problem there is no glue on the face of this planet that I have ever found that will actually hold that once I put it back together they hold it for a week they hold it for a month but eventually this is gonna pop off and all of a sudden your new gear is gonna get eaten up because it's not being felt in place that's why when we saw the repair kit the gear and the rubber replacement for this it also comes with this additional brace and the way that works is when you reassemble the motor in the headlight this brace bolts on right here over the top of that thereby securing this cover to where it cannot come off again very important if you need to do your headlights and you are have a 2000 to 2004 and the kit that you're looking at does not come with additional brace do not buy that kit because it's not going to work for an extended period of time if the kit has the additional brace odds are it will do just fine now one of the other things you have to look at in the 2002 2004 is the way that this metal motor mounts with the gear plastic gear housing basically you have four little fingers metal fingers that are basically folded over and hold this motor here and here onto the body the problem is you can see it on this one you start getting movement as these fingers relax and if this is moving that means the shaft in here is moving which helps kill your year the way to avoid that in the future is well you have this out to be rebuilt take a pair of pliers and make sure that these teeth here and here are as tight as they can be to eliminate that wobble if you have additional headline questions or additional headlight problems that you don't understand you can always get a hold of me at 800-866-5064 or at Lyle@Corvettepartscenter.com make sure you like and subscribe under this video so that I can continue to keep giving you guys the skinny on how to fix your Corvettes correctly and economically I look forward to hearing your comments