Question 1978 Town Car Headlight problem

[twilliams7]

I need help with a 1978 Lincoln Town Car. The flipup headlight covers will not stay down after the engine is turned off. When you start the engine the covers will come down and after you shut off the engine they will stay down for awhile but hen flip back up. Do these work by vaccum? Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Jibit]

It sounds like your car is confused on when its on and off! I'm not familiar with that model so I'm not sure if its vacuum or not. Check to see if you have large canisters that look like coffee cans on each fender well. That's the way my T-Bird is set up with the flip up headlights. Other than that I can't help much, if it is vacuum have fun, it took me a while to figure my bird out.

 

[Dereck]

I need help with a 1978 Lincoln Town Car. The flipup headlight covers will not stay down after the engine is turned off. When you start the engine the covers will come down and after you shut off the engine they will stay down for awhile but hen flip back up. Do these work by vaccum? Thanks in advance for any help.

Yeah your headlight doors are vacuum operated, look on the rear of the engine on the intake manifold you should find a vacuum hose (most probably with an orange stripe) going up towards the firewall with a little three way valve, the two pipes coming from it will most probably have a yellow strip on them.

Chances are it is this little three way valve that is faulty, to check start the engine and clamp the pipe from the intake manifold, switch the engine off and see if the doors still open, if not unclamp the pipe and see if there is a hissing and the doors open.

Regards

Dereck

 

[Randeaux]

:I (w/Dereck) When I was 6, My father had a new Thunderbird(1978) and the little girl next-door's father had a New Yorker that was almost as new, and where we lived there were no driveways.So, they (our fathers) usually parked their cars "face-to-face". Well, anyways, April (the little girl next door) and I would get in our parent's cars and "Flirt" with each other by flashing the headlights off-and-on to make the cars "wink" at each other.
(Ah, the innocence of late-70's childhood.) Well, so we would do this on many Staurday mornings(when you're 6, you don't understand how headlight covers on a car work.) You also don't understand that the physics of how constant changes in pressure can cause things to break, either. The same problem had come up as you mentioned to my Father's T-Bird, due to me and the neighbor girl "flirting", when my Father discovered this problem, He had found that it was the vacuum hose going into the firewall had ruptured. When he found out how it had happened, he lit me up like a Christmas Tree (In 1978, it was called discipline, not child abuse :biggrin: ) Call it a life lesson,call it whatever. I was made to stand still and watch how difficult it was to work on a car unnecessarily because I wanted to be cute with the girl next-door.(I know that sounded crazy, but somehow I never forgot about that.) {plus it was the first time my dad let me get to help him work on the car "hands-on".} :L 1997 Town Car Sig.Ser.