2024, February. Noisy headlight
I had noticed the drivers side headlight on the FHC had become a bit slow raising and lowering, it was also a bit noisy operating sometimes. Closer investigation required taking the whole motor and light assembly off the car so I had been putting the job off.
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| Ready for testing |
With the whole thing off the car and on a workbench I could run the motor for testing and sure enough it was jerky and noisy. When I disconnected the link to the motor the motor itself ran smoothly, so the problem was in the linkage. The manuals say to keep the linkage lubricated but mine looked very dry and unloved. I tried copious lubrication but that didn't inprove it much so it needed to come apart.
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| Why did they make it like this? |
The turnbuckle link needed to come off but to remove it you have to take the actual light pod off the aluminium bracket because the screw head is hidden - see picture above - and that means you lose all the settings! Obvious mod is to make a notch in the steel light unit carrier so it will be accessible in the future without removing the pod.
After all this I found the bush where the turnbuckle link fixes to motor crank bush was seized. Again lots of lubrication didn't improve it well enough for my liking but mysteriously just turning it over made it work perfectly! Weird because it looks the same both ways, but I will accept the win.
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| The culprit |
With it all apart I took the oportunity to check the motor and gears as well. It all looked in remarkably good comdition so I could just clean and regrease it.
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| Nice and clean |
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| Electrics all look good |
So it all went back together for a bench run before putting it back in the car and the mechanism ran nice and smoothly. Excellent.
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| Just needs a tidy before the light unit goes back in here. |
Took a bit of fiddling around to get the assembled unit back in so that the light pod sits nicely in the car but it all works perfectly now.
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