trouble adjusting headlight... i think its broken

[ryuji16]

this is for a gen3 v6

whenever i adjust my driver side headlamp to aim higher, it gets pushed all the way down once i close the hood. right now it aims at the ground, while the passenger one aims great.

it falls very easily, and one time i managed to shine a flashlight on the adjustment screw, and it looked stripped to me. what should i do? im reall sick of riding around with crapped out light beams. hopefully i wont have to buy a new set of lights.

[DrewsCam]

Hum i had a striped screw so i took plyers to the actaul threads on the screw and it turned, moved the light took alittle while longer but it worked

try that before u buy new lights

[ryuji16]

the screw moves fine, it actually moves a lot easier than the passenger light, which is probably a bad thing. even though the screw moves easily, the headlight does not budge at all. im thinking since the screw is stripped, it cant latch onto whatever its supposed to latch on to, so the headlight just sits there. i hope im making enough sense, or even understood your post right. thanks for the help thus far though

[BLUEMEANIE]

the threads on the headlight are plastic, so they tend to strip. My pass. side light has the same problem but I shimmed it with a plastic bottle cap for now and I plan to pull it out and do a more perminant fix when it warms up a bit. ...or just replace the whole lamp.

[ryuji16]

how did you do that, with the bottle cap? cuz i was thinking about stuffing a few washers under the light, between itself and the bumper. is this what youre talking about, cuz i know other people have done this too, even tho it is ghetto fabulous its still a lot cheaper.

[Nick]

mine are stripped too, but they're relatively well aimed, i'd say shim it, or buy new headlights (i think silverstreak is selling some)

[BLUEMEANIE]

thats exactly what I did. I put it in from the backside and shoved it forward.

[racerhex]

im doing the same!!!!

[ryuji16]

heh... we should make our own club or something.

[tater_tot]

had the same prob with mine then got this oh so great idea to buy some of those 00-01 camry halo headlights... it works butttt. there is a gap between the headlights and the parking light. thought about buying the 00-01 parking lgiths and molding em in. buttt i think i may just buy some normal headlights and turn em into projectors.

[BLUEMEANIE]

Well, I fixed mine. There is a little socket with 4 little tabs on the housing and a ball at the end of a post on the back of the lamp. All the tabs are broke off the socket which is why it stays for a little while then drops.
A headlight plus assembly is $150usd + tax from the dealer, but the assembly (aka the bucket) which they won't tell you is available without the lamp housing, is $40.
Good luck finding that part at a junk yard tho, its some of the first stuff to get stripped off when the car comes in.

[ryuji16]

thx for the heads-up, but i dont think i wanna spend that much when the bottle cap method works fine... but just in case, do you have a part number? i remember going to the dealer once and they said the only way to go is to buy a whole headlight, which was like... 150+ each.

if you had pics of the install or anything that might help, it would be great.

one more thing, i think my headlights might be aftermarket... it says "depo" on the front of the lens near the bottom, isnt that an aftermarket manufacturer? if so, would a dealer part fit with it?

[Dawgz]

man i think this is a problem with all gen 3's, my driver side one is a fckt up piece of shit headlight, when they are on, the left side goes into the right beams zone, i see everything on a stupid angle, i cant fix it because the light is set in, ARgh i need a new left side

[Silver Streak]

My gen 3 is the same, yeah, essentially the plastic gear either gets stripped or dislodged from this rod. I took mine apart and yeah, it's a really really weak design (just like our power antennas).

A little shim will work or you can buy my brand new headlights in my sig! Holy chow, only $130 Cdn!