Headlights are stuck up

[Phillip Wendt]

My headlights are stup up, they wont go down.. What to do?

[Matra_Hans]

The headlights on the Bagheera (and the Murena) go up and down by the force of a vacuum actuator that is placed some where on the left side of the front of the car and it can be assessed form beneath. The vacuum actuator is controlled by an electric controlled vacuum valve that is placed in the front “boot” on the left hand side and it gets it vacuum from the engine's inlet manifold.
So check if the electrically controlled valve is working correctly and that vacuum is available. When the Bagheera was new there was a vacuum storages tank and a non return valve in the system so you had vacuum for the headlights even if the engine is not running. The vacuum tank is a tube that is a part of the chassis and it is placed across just in front of the engine. After some years the tube starts to rust and it will no longer be air tight. To solve this problem most Bagheera owners simply will by pass the vacuum tank and will connect the vacuum hose directly to the engine. This is also the case with your Bagheera so you need to have the engine running in order to operate the headlights.

If you disconnect the vacuum hoses you should be able to push the headlights down, if not you need to grease the various connecting joints in the headlight mechanism. Remember that your car has been stored for some years, and therefore you might need to check various components that might have been damaged due to the storage.

Hans

[andyowl]

Matra-Hans wrote..If you disconnect the vacuum hoses you should be able to push the headlights down.

This is not quite correct. When the headlights are in the up position the mechanisim locks in the up position and you will have to physically push the linkage in the middle to make them go down. You can "just" see the linkage if you look through the gap below the headlight pod. I had this problem when I drove in a "Sprint" without either of  the vacuum tubes connected. The airflow over the front of the car lifted the headlights up and I finished the course with raised headlights!

The electric valve is hidden to the rear of the spare wheel and is quite hard to get at.  Connected to the valve is a single pipe that comes from the engine and two pipes that go to the headlight vacuum servo (located in front of the left front wheel).  One raises the lights and the other lowers them. If you pull the two pipes off the valve and suck hard on the "down" pipe you should be able to lower the lights without the engine running. This also works to raise the lights!

I have relocated the electric valve near the top of the spare wheel compartment on the left side to make it easier to access. The air horn compressor is also there now for the same reason.

Good luck,

Andy Owler