Hello everyone,

I have to change the bulb on the right headlight of my x-type, but I can barely access to the rear cover with my hand, so I' m not able to open it. Can enyone tell me how to proceed with the substitution of the bulb?
Best regards
Adriano
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Adriano, I know you are going to laugh at me, but I am sure others are going to agree with me. The short of the story is you need to remove the bumper cover to give you access to the bolts holding the headlight assemblies in place. Once the headlight assembly is free, then you can slide it forward and replace the bulbs.

To remove the bumper cover, you will want to remove the bolts just under the curve of the bumper cover (where the underplate bolts to the bumper cover). You wll need to remove the 10ish bolts there. Then you will need to remove the 4 screws (2 on each side) that is holding the bumper cover to the fender liner. Finally you will need to remove the 2 bolts (1 on each side) between the headlight assembly and grille. From there, you will need to reach between the fender liner and bumper cover (near the top). You will then pull straight out to release the retaining tabs (do on both sides). From there, you can slide the bumper cover forward and it will rest on the ground. Then you can remove a few more bolts per headlight assembly to get it free. This would probably be a good time to do all the bulbs there, whether they need it or not.

Of note, once you get the headlight assembly loose, be gentle with the internals of the headlights. The factory pieces get brittle with age and even moderate pressure can break the internal parts. This will cause the headlight to either point to the sky or directly in front of the car.

 

Thank you for your kind reply. I was just expecting something like this. Indeed one of my headlight has some problems with the level of the light. At this point maybe It is convenient to remove both and restore the inside of the mechanism.

 

adrianomol, I almost forgot about the hidden nut that will drive you nuts to find. Up near the top corner, there is a 10mm nut on the back side of the fender. If you hold back the fender liner and start at the top corner of the bumper cover, work your way slowly towards the headlight. You are going to feel 2 nuts there. I don't recall which one you need to remove to get the bumper cover free. There is one of these on each side of the car. The bugger of this nut is that you don't have a lot of depth to work in. I found getting a stubby ratchet with a shorter 10mm socket made things the easiest.

 

Bulb replacement =


Leveling problems =
Yup, common failure of internal "cooked" plastic parts. Do a SEARCH in this forum for fix and aftermarket fairly inexpensive parts available on line.

 

and for those of us that are more "visual"..