Dear all

It's been a rainy weather here! and water got inside the headlight.
I know how to dry the inside; it is a matter of dexterity and patience;
But where this water can infiltrate inside the headlight is a question to solve.

Any clue to do this?
Thanks
Michel

 

In my case it was the LEFT headlight, but no matter, same thing applies.

A real nuisance to see the foggy, one-eyed squint look at the front of the car ...(I replaced the headlight last November and the replacement leaked)


moisture build-up at left corner of lens


annoying steam-up inside headlight

..so today, I decided to have a go at fixing it.

As the sealant between the glass and the reflector housing must be where the moisture got in, I decided to reef out as much as I could because it was definitely not doing it's job.

However, before progressing on to the re-sealing/caulking stage I had to get the moisture out.

First I removed the assembly from the car (4 nuts on my '94) and used a series of paper towels as "mini-mops" to soak up the moisture.

The only access to the inside is through the bulb sockets, so that's where the paper towels went in. Because getting them back out could have been a problem, I devised this gizmo to get them in and out easily:



two sheets folded together and inserted into the split bamboo - good grip!



bamboo stick split, paper towels impaled!

Next I rolled up the towels around the bamboo and "screwed" them into the headlight following the twist of the roll-up.




mopping up!

I repeated the process three more times and the 4th time the mop came out dry. I sat the headlight on the heat register for an hour just to make sure it was thoroughly dried out then set about re-sealing.


reefing out the old caulk to make room for the new stuff; lens masked off to avoid slop.



Used this silicone for the seal, could have gone for different stuff, but this was on hand and looked like it would be good enough.




New caulk applied.


all done, ready to re-fit chrome trim

I'd planned on re-installing the headlight tomorrow, but the caulk set up pretty quickly so I fitted it this evening.

Tomorrow I find out how to aim the headlight

HTH

Larry

 

Not sure what the housing is made of but it looks to be some sort of heavy duty plastic. On many cars,there were the same issues but more commonly on taillights. The cure was to drill two or three small 1/8" drain holes in the lower corners so the moisture would have a place to drain out. Hope this helps.

 

The housing is indeed made of plastic. It has a desiccator inside the reflector, a 3" tube filled with desiccant that vents to the outside ...

 

The housing of headligths is made of PVC; after inspection I found several cracks which allow water to infiltrate into the housing.
Because a lot of moisture inside I decided to open the headlight: not so easy at first intention because of the sealing of the glass with the PVC housing.
The silicone sealing is in fact easy to soften by spraying a silicone solvant inside the housing .
Once separated into 4 parts (glass, chromed plastic reflector, chromed metal main reflector and PVC housing) cleaning and sealing th cracks is made possible.
The main chrome reflector was deteriorated on its upper part: the mirroring surface made of chrome was brown, no more mirroring.
I asked for quotations for restoring the chrome surface: the cost (in France) is very high (around 100 euros plus shipping).

Would you recommend to make the conversion from H4 to LED or Xenon to avoid the expensive chrome restoration?

 

I would purchase some highly reflective metal (aluminum?) self-adhesive tape and cut it carefully until you cover the deteriorated area.

As we are talking compound curves here, you'll have to cut several "V" pieces out of the strips to fully seat the tape, but if you do a neat job the results will be almost as good as if you had the reflector re-chromed. Don't be tempted to get any "spray chrome" paint - they're all pretty useless for something like this.

bon chance

Larry

 

This is the only way to fix this issue properly. I've done it a couple times on Bonnevilles and Grand Prixs. Good time to get the inside of the lenses all cleaned/shined to get rid of any haze.