[bartleph]

My wife has a lovely little puma we picked up last autumn. We both agree it's a fun car to own and drive. The other evening she picked a friend up and as her friend got into the car, she said.."Your lefthand headlight is ever so bright...it nearly blinded me as you pulled up." As you have probably guessed, the nearside headlight motor was not working. Moving the adjuster on the dash, only affected the offside light, which smoothly moved up and down as required.

I took the nearside headlamp unit out of the car, and removed the bulbs. It's very important not to touch the glass, as any grease provides a hotspot, and the bulb will rapidly expire. I then seperated the main headlamp glass assembly away from the projector lens assembly. With carefule pulling, the projecter lens assembly then comes out of the housing. There are four ball joints to allow movement. One on the outer edge, two either end of a plastic "T" rod in the centre, and the spigot of the motor itself held in by a flexible plastic lever. you just have to tug hard and the balls are then released. Two torx screws hold the motor in place, and the electronics are inside the box. Once out, I took the wiring harness right out of the unit and went back to the car. Connected back up to the loom, I tried the adjuster while monitoring the motor. I could hear the offside one moving but the nearside was silent. . You can get to the innerds of the motor by levering the locking tabs and pulling the cover off. The PCB complete with motor will slide out after releasing a couple of plastic tags. The whole circuit is a servo motor, and that works by the motor being attached to a variable resistor. when you alter the switch on the dash, you send a voltage to the servo, and it causes the motor to run, and as it does so it moves it's own variable resistor, until the voltages match. That's when it stops. There is a little plastic tab which joins the adjusting spigot to the servo variable resistor, and on my wife's car, this had become uncoupled... it was just a simple matter of pushing back into place...a good click lets you know it's in, and then to reassemble the lamp unit.

I have to say it took me just about an hour to do, but that is purely because I had done some research on this forum initially to know how to get the lamp out of the car in about 3 minutes...

I hope this helps anyone with a similar problem...

[happy-kat]

great I wonder if I could have done that fix rather than replacing my motor with a new one, would have been cheaper.

Can I add this to the Wiki please? (I have a photo of the unit to go with this)

[bartleph]

Yep...no problem. If it helps someone else fix a similar problem that would be great...

[happy-kat]

done thanks
here

[dj4mos]

Yep...no problem. If it helps someone else fix a similar problem that would be great...

It has... I've been meaning to do repalce my motor for about 6 months now, it's been annoying the hell out of me! Your guide inspired me to get off my ar$e and do it, and the photo was a big help too many thanks!! (Plus the motor only cost me a fiver from a scrappy this afternoon - result!)