Headlight Replacement

Costs:

Bulbs are Halogen FoMoCo labelled parts = £27 each

Hardware mounting kit = £23 set

What’s in the box:

The bulbs come as they are sold separately. There are many, many different styles of the 7″ bulbs. Modern style with the replacement bulbs and static lenses, HiD bulbs or the sealed beams. There are sealed beam with or without the Ford logos, sealed Angel Eye bulbs, LED bulbs. So you need to pic what style and look you are after. Personally I love the stock look and went for the Sealed Halogen FoMoCo parts. The hardware kits has the replacement bolts for the headlamp doors, bowl and retaining ring, adjusting studs with their brackets and the spring.

Background:

If you need to replace the parts like I did as most had gone to the great scrapyard in the sky, or gone rusty then there are complete packs for the headlight assembly.

The headlight bulbs are mounted behind the headlamp door which in turn exposes the retaining ring which is nice shiny bit of chrome, if you’re lucky. To replace the sealed beam is a fairly quick process, four screws on the headlight door and the three on the retaining ring. The bulb will fall forward and pull the loom plug off the back of the three spade connections. To refit, repeat the process in reverse. It’s honestly that simple.

What I aim to do here is to show the complete headlight rebuild with the Scott Drake hardware kit.

I am assuming that you have fitted the basic headlamp bracket in place. Attach the four new clips to the outside of the headlamp assembly making sure they are the correct way round with the threaded part to the back. Once these clips snap into place they can moved around by a couple of millimetres to enable the headlamp door to secure correctly.

The next part is slightly more tricky as the adjustment studded threads have to be fitted. The retaining clips for the studs has a white washer in the middle. These clips are pressed into the holes at the top and sides where the legs on each side stop the fitting falling through the to the back. With the legs on the front side the backing part of the fitting needs to be pressed behind the headlamp assembly. If these are to tight bend the legs slightly forward to enable the fitting to sit further back into the hole and allow it to slip behind the back plate into place. There is a small amount of movement here to allow the bowl to fit.

There are two long threaded studs that have a recessed groove at the top. Screw the two studs into the nylon washer/nut and turn a few threads.

Next it’s the headlight bowl itself, the only tricky part of this is the spring fitting which I will explain in a couple of mins. Around the outside of the bowl there are two cut out lugs and a rectangle cut out. The lugs will locate in the collar of the studs. This will enable you to wind the stud either way to adjust the angles of the beam.

The bowl is a loose fit at this point, so a spring is required to pull the tension against the studs and to stop the lens itself moving around. The spring is located into a hole at the back of the bucket and pulled through the bowl opening to create the tension. Previously I had made one of the spring tools, but as I had left it at home it was the old school way of a good ol’ pair of pliers. If you are going to use pliers, I would strongly recommend a long nosed pair of pliers with a very good grip. The spring itself is quite strong and needs a little bend just to get the hook of the spring over the edge of the bowl into the retaining eye.

With the bowl now in place you can add the bulb. Attach the loom connections to the back of the bulb and massage the wires into place at the back of the housing. (I couldn’t get pictures of this part as I didn’t want to drop the bulb trying to do it one handed.)

Holding the bulb in place place the chrome ring around the outside of the bowl and screw lightly into place on the bowl to stop the bulb falling out. Repeat with the other two screws.

The bulb is now in place and needs to be aligned up correctly. If the bulb is just a replacement then it should not need to be an adjusted. Adjust the beam with the studs to angle the lens.

With the ring screws now in place, you should be able to unscrew each a few turns so that the chrome ring will twist a little and lift over the head of the retaining screws.  This obviously makes it much easier for replacing the bulbs at a later date.

Once the bulb is aligned the last job is to refit the headlight door. Screw into place lightly and align the doors back up with the with the fenders bevelled edges. That’s it – job done, quite simple.

Time Taken:

30 mins each side and that included taking the pictures.

Results:

A new pair of headlights can make a big difference to the look of the car, clear lenses or go stock it’s up to you. But the job is quite easy. A lot of screws to deal with but we’ll worth the effort.