HDKdesigner

I ran a few google and forum searches and haven't been able to find anyone else who posted the same issue as the one I'm having, so I hope you guys will be able to help me out.

My headlights have worked fine since I've owned the car, but this morning when I flipped the switch to turn on the headlights, they went part of the way up, but not all the way, so they were aimed straight down onto the road. When I hit the switch to turn them off, the bulbs turned off, but the headlights didn't move at all. They stayed put in their "half-up" position. I was able to manually raise and lower them, so there wasn't anything in the way preventing them from moving. I then went to a parts store and I plugged a generic relay that was essentially the same as the stock one into the headlight motor and the headlights retracted, but then they wouldn't go back up. So, it seems that the original fuse was bad but apparently wasn't the only problem. I can't think of what else the problem would be since the motor has to be good to have initially raised the headlights part or the way and then lowering them when I put in the different relay. The same goes for the headlight switch since it turns the bulbs on and off and the headlight unit retracted when I put in the new relay. In addition, when I connected the old relay to the battery directly, it clicked open and closed, so I don't see why it didn't do anything but the new fuse did.
I'm stumped on this one, so hopefully someone else has some ideas or maybe experienced the same issue themselves.

snb13

Check all the connections for corrosion and clean your grounds.

Schmooey

Agreed. My first attempt at a solution would be to clean both grounds under each of the headlights. (It's more likely the one under the headlight motor, but it can't hurt to do both.)

jr10cross

Check the 12 mm bolt that connect the headlight motor to the bar that turns to lift/lower both headlights. If the bolt is a bit loose, it will cause the headlights to drop and not open all the way. Also check the warning fuse in your fusebox, it actually ties the system together. I had an issue where the lights would raise but not lower. It turned out to be a missing fuse, yours could be blown. Here is a video of troubleshooting including the pop-ups:

HDKdesigner

I cleaned the grounds and even took out the motor and opened it up to clean the contact disk, but my problem persists. I opened up the original fuse to see if I could potentially clean the contacts and get it working again, but this also failed. For some reason, the fuse can't complete the circuit on its own, but it will complete the circuit when I manually close the coil. I manually closed the coil while I had the relay attached to the motor and I can confirm that the motor does, in fact, work fine and, based on the clicks I heard coming from somewhere near the firewall while I did this, the contact wheel must be making good contact with the tabs inside the cover. The only thing I can think to try now is to put in a genuine Porsche/VW fuse instead of the generic one I tried earlier. Also, for clarification, my car is a 1984 model year.

jr10cross

Did you check the warning light fuse? It caused me to have the same issue.

HDKdesigner

The only fuse that is out is the fog light fuse, but it's been like that since I got the car, so I doubt it's an issue. Plus, my car is an early 944, so the fuses are set up differently.

jr10cross

that's right. duh! My bad. Lol

GPA951s

Check for "open" wires, I just fixed some on my 86, 30 years of going up and down and twisting will eventually break the wires. My Educated Guess is that it is making contact up to a point but once the wire moves so far it no longer has connection. - Glen

HDKdesigner

It sounds like you are talking about the wires that go to the headlights themselves, which isn't really the issue, but regardless, the wires to the headlight motor pass a visual inspection. I also connected the motor and manually closed the coil on the original relay, which resulted in the motor running continuously with no issues, so the wires to the motor surely must be in good enough shape. The problem has to, I think, be the relay, but like I mentioned earlier, I don't see why the generic relay I tried swapping in at first didn't work.