82 h'light-One won't go down

04-15-2008, 01:23 pm

Hi all, Brand spanky new here... haha, nice site. I did search first but saw no specific comments on my Q:. Simply, I have the 82 vette and the pass side headlight will not go down. Background-I did replace the hoses on both driver & pass sides. With car running and vacuum light override switch below steer column in its pushed in position, I can pull out the headlight switch knob and the driver side comes up though a little slow... the pass side is already up. Push knob in and down goes the driver side only.

I did try taking the red, green, yellow hoses off of both smaller vac devices, the ones in the middle about 4 inches from each other, and simply swapping them (left to right, and right to left) just to see if it would do anything but no difference. I'm not sure if that is a valid test but would assume that doing so means the driver side light would now be operated by the passenger side vacuum and components(?) And since it still went up/down OK, then all of the vacuum related stuff (canisters, hoses, actuators) on BOTH sides are OK and maybe it is a mechanical issue... Am absolutely not expecting anyone here to be able to say "Oh, this is the problem", but if it sounds familiar, feel free to reply, meanwhile I will continue to try to isolate the problem and will of course report back here if solve it. :>) Regards, Lets GOLF... Golfguyyyy

aquaholic · 04-15-2008, 04:15 pm

what you did by swapping the hoses from right actuator controller to the left was fine. the fact that it still didn't work, well, you'll have to do some more. you'll now need to determine whether it's the actuator controller or the actuator itself. to test the actuator itself, just pull the tube off of the actuator itself (the big gold canister) that is actually connected to the headlight linkage and put a main vacuum line to it or use a "mighty vac" hand pump and pump it directly. if it moves, its probably the actuator controller (the little black thing toward the center of the car with the 4 tubes going into it). if it doesn't move with a main vacuum line going to it, the diaphram in the actuator is bad. i'll try to post a pic tonight as i know i have the vacuum diagram but i dont know if this forum will let me post a pic of that size.

aquaholic · 04-15-2008, 04:58 pm

hope this worked

aquaholic · 04-15-2008, 05:09 pm

heres another with an actuator controller detail.

04-15-2008, 01:23 pm	#1
golfguyyyy Guest Posts: n/a	82 h'light-One won't go down Hi all, Brand spanky new here... haha, nice site. I did search first but saw no specific comments on my Q:. Simply, I have the 82 vette and the pass side headlight will not go down. Background-I did replace the hoses on both driver & pass sides. With car running and vacuum light override switch below steer column in its pushed in position, I can pull out the headlight switch knob and the driver side comes up though a little slow... the pass side is already up. Push knob in and down goes the driver side only. I did try taking the red, green, yellow hoses off of both smaller vac devices, the ones in the middle about 4 inches from each other, and simply swapping them (left to right, and right to left) just to see if it would do anything but no difference. I'm not sure if that is a valid test but would assume that doing so means the driver side light would now be operated by the passenger side vacuum and components(?) And since it still went up/down OK, then all of the vacuum related stuff (canisters, hoses, actuators) on BOTH sides are OK and maybe it is a mechanical issue... Am absolutely not expecting anyone here to be able to say "Oh, this is the problem", but if it sounds familiar, feel free to reply, meanwhile I will continue to try to isolate the problem and will of course report back here if solve it. :>) Regards, Lets GOLF... Golfguyyyy
golfguyyyy Guest Posts: n/a

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