Hi,
I might be alone on this, but I had a hell of time figuring out how to repair/replace the tilt motor. All the google searches I did lead me to a mixture of results with the most common being references to TSB 10-12, confusion between tilt and telescoping issues, and people copying the TSB procedure. So, if like me you couldn't find a clear explanation, let me help!

First, tilt = up/down. This is when you move the switch on the steering column up/down. This is what I'm talking about here.

Second, removing the tilt motor is extremely easy.
1) Remove trim panel under dash. This is held in with 4 screws. There is also one of those interior push-in fittings on the left side that may prevent easy removal. Mine was previously broken so I don't know how much resistance it offers. This trim piece also has one electrical connector to remove (easy to do after pulling the panel free)
2) Remove air duct. It is held in place by a single nut. All you need to do is losen it a the duct should be free
3) Unbolt the tilt motor on the bottom of the steering column. It's held in with two socket head cap screws and will immediately come free. The connection to the column is a slip fit and will pull away easily (move motor towards front of car to disengage)
4) Unclip wire to tilt motor

That's it, now it's free and in your hands.

The next question is why does it fail. I'll spare you the details of how I arrived at the conclusion, but at least for me the root cause was the cap and body of the motor not being held tightly together. Essentially the two bearings holding the rotor lose alignment due to the loads in the system. Unfortunately, this is not a bolted joint so the only thing that can be done easily is to bend the fingers holding them together as best you can. After doing that the motor worked fine when given 12v on the bench, but after being back in the car the load from the steering column was enough to cause the same failure mode. I actually found that if I reached under the dash and held the body down while pushing the switch up it would work just fine. This led me down the path of finding a way to mechanically hold the body to the cap.

Please excuse the poor picture below and rather unfinished look of the parts (function>form for this project), but what you see in the image here totally solved the problem. I basically built an exoskeleton to hold everything together. I'll try to get some better pictures soon as it was late last night when I finished, but what you see are two rings held together with some hex bar stock. I intentionally made the hex bar short in order to ensure clamp loads were applied to the cap and not to these spacers. I'm sure there are more elegant solutions here, but that was the material I had and I wanted to prove I had found the issue.

I hope this helps somebody because the TSB sounds scary by comparison when it really shouldn't be. At very least you now know that removing/replacing the motor is a fast job (~10min). I didn't really want to go down that road since all you can find now are used motors and what are the odds that another 20yr old motor will really be in better shape than yours? These parts took me the better part of a day to machine, largely because the only material I had sitting around that was big enough in diameter was steel. Aluminum would certainly do the job and be much faster.


x300 xj6/r/12 tilt motor exoskeleton

Daniel

 

Nice work!
I haven't had the problem myself, but I like your thinking.Clamp the bugger back together,
Mine seems to make more noise than it should. I wonder if locking in down like this and aligning the bearings could make it quieter. Do you notice any noise difference?

 

Well done!

 

My motor didn't work when I bought the car so I don't know what "normal" is. It's certainly not making any noises I would deem concerning, but I can hear it. If the friction in your system is higher then the motor will struggle which would increase noise. The gear mechanism is very simple and in my case there was very little evidence of wear or other issues. I mean how often do these things get used anyway? I added some more grease just to be safe though since I had it apart. If you try to do something similar you will also need to disassemble the motor as the fingers holding it together have to be shortened (not removed completely as they also provide orientation) so you can look at all the bits inside.

Daniel

 

Here are some more pictures after I removed some excess material and sanded them a bit.