As the weather was so good this weekend i decided it was finally time to bite the bullet and finally get on with splitting and painting my headlights. I thought i'd put a little write up together as although there snippets of useful information, i would have liked a proper 'How To' just to give me a bit more confidence.
The first job was pretty easy, just unscrew the three screws holding the headlights in place (two on the top, one just inside the grille) and then unclip the wire harness on the left or right (depending on which side of the car you're on)
Once the units were out, i took out all the bulbs and turned on the oven. I turned the oven on to 200 degrees and once it reached that temperature i switched it off and left it for 5 mins. Then one by one i put each headlight in for a few minutes
Just long enough for the plastic and silicone sealant to become pliable. Once out of the oven i used a hairdryer to focus heat on the area i was working on, to keep the plastic and silicone workable. Using a small flat head screwdriver i slowly worked along the join of the lens and the case, carefully prising apart the lens making sure not use too much pressure and cracking anything. There are a number of tabs/ clips along the edge which you need to be careful not to break/ miss out, as once these are undone the light comes apart very easily.
(work in small sections at a time to ensure you don't crack the lens)
It's actually quite an easy process once there is enough heat in the sealant to work it easily. It took between 5-10 mins to split each light in total and no damage occurred.
The next task was to remove the chrome ring around the headlight and the pod that holos the indicator. There are 3 torx screws behind holding the headlight ring in place and two underneath the indicator pod.
As with anything you paint, make sure you sand the surface well enough to give the primer and paint a good key. I made sure that all the surfaces were nice and dull before spraying my layers of primer and paint, using a fine grade of wet and dry paper. I decided to add a bit of contrast by spraying the main casing matt black, and the headlight ring gloss black
I found a neat trick to mask up the main headlight reflector, by covering it with a plastic bag and pulling the handles through back of the light. This meant all the wires were covered and there was a good tight fit round the reflector so no paint could get in. I used electrical tape to cover up the side light reflector to make sure that no paint could affect the efficiency of my lights after painting them.
I decided to leave the chrome ring on my indicator pod so just masked it off and painted the grey plastic part only. With the indicator pod out i took the opportunity to remove the orange lens which is just held in place with a small clip on the inside. With a flat screwdriver just push on the clip and the whole lens just pops off. Easy as that! Once everything was dry it was time to put it all back together.
To reseal the lights i used a screw driver to get out a lot of the old silicone sealant that was gunking up the casing and the lens, then re-applied black silicone sealant around the inside of the lip of the case, making sure that corners were filled and there was coverage the whole way round. Then its just a case of pushing the lenses back into the lip around the case and making sure the tabs/ clips go back in. I left my light units to set for about half an hour before re-fitting the bulbs back in and then fitting back onto the car.
Yes it's scary taking your lights and baking them in the oven and pulling them apart and it's also very time consuming, but it's not as difficult as you'd think and the result is just so worth it. I'm glad i decided to give it a go, and hopefully reading this will give you the confidence to try it out for yourself.
Cheers,
Tom
Site Supporter
(11-15)
thought grey plastic was a better way to go than black...
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