Headlight Retaining Ring Replacement

Background:

The headlight bulbs are held in the headlight buckets via a retaining ring and three screws. The sealed 7″ beam (bulb) headlights have a flat surface which allows the bulb to clamps into place. Originally these rings were made in a single piece and wrapped around into a circle and joined via small delicate spot welds. These often break and allow the headlight bulb to rattle around. You can use this process to change the headlight bulb or just the rings here.

Costs:

£20 each for the retaining rings

Link here to Mustang Maniac: Mustang Spare Parts: 64-73 Headlight Retaining Ring

£45 each for a standard 7″ sealed beam halogen bulb

Link here to Mustang Maniac: Mustang Spare Parts: 64-73 7″ Round Halogen Headlight

What’s in the box:

There is no box, just a plastic bag to keep them clean. These parts are also quite delicate and you should be careful fitting them.

Process:

The headlights are in four main parts working from the fender towards the front. Headlight bucket housing, headlight bucket, adjustment screws, headlight (bulb), retaining ring and finally the headlight door.

To change anything it’s pretty straight forward. The headlight door has four screws located in each corner arrowed below here.

Carefully unscrew them so you don’t damage the paint job and lift the door away.

Removing of the headlight door which will expose the adjustment screws and the headlight ring which has three screws which are staggered and can only be fitted in one direction.

Loosen the screws on the headlight ring and you can twist it counter clock wise to allow the screw to fit inside the ring. You can then lift of the ring away from the bucket. Hold the headlight (bulb) itself so it doesn’t fall out and break or damage the bodywork.

Comparing the original on the left which has the clearly visible join, and the aftermarket which does not as seen on the right here. I forgot to take a pic of the split ring, but I did the comparison after I repaired the original on the left with a little JB Weld, before I cleaned it up again.

I gave both the old and new sets of rings a little polish to compare them. The camera didn’t pick up much of difference, but there definitely was compared with the old one on the bottom in the left hand picture.

Refitting:

A complete reversal of the removal, this time fitting the ring don’t overtighten the three retaining screws as you could distort the ring or worse case pop the delicate spot welds.

Optional: To Replace the headlight

At the back of the bulb pull the wire loom connector which has three prongs on the back of the bulb. This bulb is my original and was replaced, but never cleaned.

Swap the headlights over and refit the plug to the prongs of the bulb.

The back of the headlight has a small protruding lugs which fits into the headlight bucket which will align the top of the headlight and also stop the headlight from rotating with any vibration. There should be no need to adjust the beam itself as it will locate back in the same position within the bucket.

The headlight if replaced and ring are now in place and tightened up.

While the headlight door was off I took the opportunity to polish the top of the headlight door bolts, just because I can.

Refit the headlight door back in place and fit all screws to lightly hold the door in position. With all four screws in place align the headlight door up to the rest of the fender and tighten the screws up in opposite corners progressively.

Results:

To the untrained eye? None. But there is now a shiny ring and a couple of polished screws in place. TO me I can see there is a difference and I know its sup[er clean and shiny.

It goes without saying that this was only headlight ring being changed, both sides are exactly the same.

Was it worth doing, yes. as the headlight was a little loose. It being the headlight (bulb) wouldn’t have gone anywhere due to the screws still all being in place.

You don’t need to replace both sides, but I wanted them to match. I have kept the originals as I might want to refit them if i get them polish up super nice. But due to the age I’m not convinced they will.