What's so hard about opening the headlights?

[guru_method]

I bought a set of halogens in good condition at a good price just to swap the lenses onto my Xenons because they have 37 million tiny cracks on the inside that makes them look horrible.

Now, I've opened a few headlights before but I read that these are extremely difficult to do. What exactly is so hard about it?

I also read that there is a hot-knife method that involves cutting a certain part to be able to take out the lens completely. Does anybody have an idea what part exactly needs to be cut out?

After close examination i see that the part that might be troublesome could be the outside corner but am not sure.

PLEASE HELP

[tglazed]

I attempted to open my headlights and gave up. I have opened countless headlights but these are on an entirely different level. If you attempt please take pictures and notes on what you do. I was stumped and threw in the towel

[drewster99]

I've opened a bunch too but I'm hesitant since so many people on here basically say it's impossible. Please post your progress if you make any.

[ShocknAwe]

If you're willing to cut them open and reseal it's not a big deal. That's what OSS etc do.

[tglazed]

Even cutting them is pretty hard. I took a razor to my headlights and couldn't get them open. Tried heat gun and cutting and oven then cutting. None worked for me. I'm going to go at it again soon though because I was pretty tired the night i tried.

http://www.lightwerkz.net/news/2012/...ye-conversion/

[Gray_Panther]

I got them open hehe. Will post later. Currently at work dominating life.

[guru_method]

Originally Posted by tglazed

I attempted to open my headlights and gave up. I have opened countless headlights but these are on an entirely different level. If you attempt please take pictures and notes on what you do. I was stumped and threw in the towel

Originally Posted by drewster99

I've opened a bunch too but I'm hesitant since so many people on here basically say it's impossible. Please post your progress if you make any.

I have two sets at the moment and wouldn't think twice to hack up the halogens. I'll be sure to get some pics of that and document it as best I can.

Originally Posted by ShocknAwe

If you're willing to cut them open and reseal it's not a big deal. That's what OSS etc do.

I would, but it seems to be excessive at least for the whole headlight. There are also areas where it seems it would be impossible to cut. Since I am swapping lenses the cuts on the 4 headlights would have to matchup perfectly to be able to swap, I don't think it's the best idea for my situation.

Originally Posted by tglazed

Even cutting them is pretty hard. I took a razor to my headlights and couldn't get them open. Tried heat gun and cutting and oven then cutting. None worked for me. I'm going to go at it again soon though because I was pretty tired the night i tried.

http://www.lightwerkz.net/news/2012/...ye-conversion/

There is a thing called the hot knife which is basically a very hot scalpel-like knife that will melt the plastic and cuts like butter. That's what retrofitters use.

Thanks for the link, it doesn't seem like they cut at all to me in those pics.

Originally Posted by Gray_Panther

I got them open hehe. Will post later. Currently at work dominating life.

Share your wisdom!

[tglazed]

And we will never hear from him again

[Gray_Panther]

Originally Posted by tglazed

And we will never hear from him again

Quoting your post so you know I responded.

Ok let's begin:
There are confirmed two clean ways to separate the lens from the plastic housing. The hardest is using a long flat-head screwdriver and a heat gun. The simplest is by use of a hot knife.
Heat gun method-
Prepare to brawl and flex the housing all around, you will need to heat up the plastic and the damn perma-seal. Start at the top middle and heat up the plastic, not so much that the lens melts also. Keep the heat gun about 5" away, 3-4" if you are brave, and don't concentrate on one spot rather move it along the lining to heat up the area. Check often, as in heat for 15-20 seconds and try to lift up the plastic with a screwdriver. If it is not budging, try forcing and scraping before heating again.
Once you can slide the screwdriver in, try to slide through inside the housing, once this is done you will have a starting point. Now move left and right evenly and don't just go around clock/counter-clockwise. Keep lifting the plastic and scraping off the perma-seal, don't be afraid to mess up the plastic lining.
The reason you can mess up the plastic lining on the housing is because you can use the heat gun to reform the plastic so as to create a channel again. Use butyl rubber to fill the channel and THEN you can throw it in the oven to put the lens back onto the housing.

Hot knife method-
This is crazy simple, I kick myself for not doing it on the first two times I have separated the headlights! Take a hot knife attached to a soldering iron or whatever, make sure it is thin and not thick. Just knife all along the headlight, pretty much 1cm behind where the actual lens sits. I will be receiving Infiniti headlights early next week and I will use the hot knife method and record it on youtube. I will also include in the video actual 1er headlights and mark a trail to follow when hot-knifing them open.
You will have to wait until spring (April or May) when I take apart my 1er headlights to change up the eyebrow. When I make that video I will post a thread on the forum for all to see....unless someone else does it before me!

Here is a picture of the heat gun method, you will notice how the lining of the housing is severely bent up. Not a big deal, because I applied heat to the plastic and reformed it. I then sealed the headlights back up and threw it in a humidity chamber at work...No condensation!!


Hope this helps, feel free to pm me if you want to talk about it over the phone.

[tglazed]

You are the man! I will be trying the hot knife method probably Wednesday. Ill take pictures if I succeed.

[Gray_Panther]

Originally Posted by tglazed

You are the man! I will be trying the hot knife method probably Wednesday. Ill take pictures if I succeed.

I will post a video to show where exactly the trail should be to hot knife. It would suck if you hot knife a clip or a post that cannot be repaired. But if you want to go for it then be my guest.

[tglazed]

So what did you end up doing wih the Orange/clear reflector. I have mine apart right now and am not sure what to do with it. If I should paint the entire thing, leave the entire thing out of the headlight, I can't just paint the Orange part as it is pretty hard to tape off to get the line right. Any opinions on what I should do?

[Gray_Panther]

Originally Posted by tglazed

So what did you end up doing wih the Orange/clear reflector. I have mine apart right now and am not sure what to do with it. If I should paint the entire thing, leave the entire thing out of the headlight, I can't just paint the Orange part as it is pretty hard to tape off to get the line right. Any opinions on what I should do?

That's great that you got them apart, how did you go about doing it?

I like the look of the orange reflector so I left it in.

Take a wide roll of painters tape and just slap it over the border between the clear and the orange and take the knife of Exact-O and cut along the border. Remove the tape on the orange side and paint away.

Edit: OP, can I have your old lenses?

[tglazed]

Screw driver and heat gun. What are you using to seal it back up?
Also, my lense looks like shit, the PO took sand paper or something to it and left it all scratchy... I have buffed, polished, everything in the books to try refinishing these, does anyone have an idea of what else to try. I am tempted to try re clearing them but am pretty sketched out about that.

[Gray_Panther]

Originally Posted by tglazed

Screw driver and heat gun. What are you using to seal it back up?
Also, my lense looks like shit, the PO took sand paper or something to it and left it all scratchy... I have buffed, polished, everything in the books to try refinishing these, does anyone have an idea of what else to try. I am tempted to try re clearing them but am pretty sketched out about that.

Do you have any pictures?

I used butyl rubber to seal them back up. I got it from theretrofitsource.

[tglazed]

Ya I'll post pictures later today of the headlights finished and of the scuffed up lense.




Don't mind the terrible sealing job, got carried away because I didn't want any moisture in there

[Gray_Panther]

Originally Posted by tglazed

Ya I'll post pictures later today of the headlights finished and of the scuffed up lense.




Don't mind the terrible sealing job, got carried away because I didn't want any moisture in there

Those look great. I like what you did with the orange.

[Pig Farmer]

Originally Posted by tglazed

Screw driver and heat gun. What are you using to seal it back up?
Also, my lense looks like shit, the PO took sand paper or something to it and left it all scratchy... I have buffed, polished, everything in the books to try refinishing these, does anyone have an idea of what else to try. I am tempted to try re clearing them but am pretty sketched out about that.

Just a thought... When I was in high school I took a shop class where we worked with plexiglas. After cutting, we would sand the plexiglas with 280 grit, then 400 grit, then 600 grit, then 1000 grit wet sandpaper. After the sanding we would use a buffing wheel with a bit of compound to polish the plexiglass. When finished, it looked better than new. The key was to take your time, rinse often, and make sure each successive sanding removed all of the marks left by the previous piece of sandpaper. I would guess that this process would take a couple hours per lens. I'm just not sure if clear coat would adhere to the lenses after they are buffed.

[tglazed]

Originally Posted by Pig Farmer

Just a thought... When I was in high school I took a shop class where we worked with plexiglas. After cutting, we would sand the plexiglas with 280 grit, then 400 grit, then 600 grit, then 1000 grit wet sandpaper. After the sanding we would use a buffing wheel with a bit of compound to polish the plexiglass. When finished, it looked better than new. The key was to take your time, rinse often, and make sure each successive sanding removed all of the marks left by the previous piece of sandpaper. I would guess that this process would take a couple hours per lens. I'm just not sure if clear coat would adhere to the lenses after they are buffed.

Ill look more into that. 3M's headlight restoration kit is very similar but it was not near aggressive enough to get out the scratches that were already there.

[guru_method]

I've been out of it for a while... dominating life as they say

Originally Posted by Gray_Panther

Edit: OP, can I have your old lenses?

When I finish up you can have them for sure. They look very clear but they have a lot of "micro cracking" on the inside that's impossible to take out and light will reflect off them.

Originally Posted by tglazed

Ill look more into that. 3M's headlight restoration kit is very similar but it was not near aggressive enough to get out the scratches that were already there.

3M won't get you anywhere with deep scratches like those.

I went a little overkill but with great results. The lights weren't yellowed but did have some random deep scratches from being stored improperly and a lot of stone chips. I bought every single sandpaper grit from 180-2500. This is what I did:

- Cleaned the headlights with dishsoap and water.
- Had some clean soapy water in a bowl next to the headlight.
- Wet the headlight and the paper and started sanding in circular motion (found this to be better than side to side). Sand a little then wet the paper again, sand a little then wet the paper again. Some people use a spray bottle, I like to rinse out the paper to remove the build up.
- Initially it is going to be hard to see results, this is because there is a protective coating that needs to be sanded off and doesn't like leaving it's home.
- Once the headlight looks evenly cloudy, you're ready to clean and move on to the next grit. It might take 10 or more minutes per grit so be patient and make sure you go everything evenly.
- Once you've finished with the 2500 or whatever the highest grit you could find is, give it a nice cleaning.
- I am lucky enough to own a Flex Polisher, so I took some Menzerna FG400 with a cutting pad and gave it a nice buff. Followed up with Menzerna Super Finish with a finishing pad. Then sealed with Menzerna power lock. This is totally optional, a very thorough hand buff with quality polishing compound and sealants should work too.

This is how they turned out, my plan is to swap the lenses as well as the eyebrow and interior trim onto my xenons.

[tglazed]

Wow that looks incredible. My next day off I know what I'm doing

[mmmusty]

fantastic, thanks guys, particularly Panther!