danny951

I've got an 86 951. Sometimes when I turn of my headlights, they stay up and won't go down. I open up the hood and look, and the motor that controls both lights will spin about 1/2 rev and then stop and 'unspin', leaving the lights up.

The only thing I can do is take out fuse #16 (headlight motor) and manually spin the motor till the lights are down, then put the fuse back in.. I then turn the lights back on, and they come up no problem at all, but won't go back down! so this time I try to 'help' the motor down carefully spinning it down, but it abruptly spins back up and the lights pop up from about half-way. So I do the fuse trick again and bypass the sensor in the motor.

then after a couple days, the lights operate just fine, up or down. This has happened twice..

the motor seems fine, the switch seems fine. This is because the motor is trying to go down, but it's like it has an obstruction that makes it stop so it doesn't burn the motor out. but untill I pull the fuse, it keeps trying to put them down.

i can't find any obstructions.. anyone else see this???

I just bought the car and hope I can find something without having to replace the light motor or something

IceShark

I have never been through that whole motor but there is a limit switch in there that is connected to fuse #16. So I guess your only option at this point is to dig in, find the switch and figure out what is wrong with it. I think it is a red/green wire that comes from fuse #16 to the limit switch, so follow that to the switch.

I assume your headlight linkage moves smoothly and doesn't bind at all. If it does bind, grease that up and maybe adjust VERY carefully. The limit switch or motor may have some sort of thermal overload protection that makes it give up if the going gets too tough.