Replacing headlight covers

[rbryantaz]

Originally Posted by Salty B.

But I don't want my dinner tasting of old melted plastic

Found a youtoob on the topic, though I disagree with his use of RTV to re-seal the cover. I've ordered butyl rope and a cheap heat gun.

+1 I also just used a heat gun on my e70 when installing the butyl. I even messed up and didn't have the internal plastic aligned and had to pull it back apart again after sealing it with butyl and the heat gun worked well for that too.

The factory RTV is a disaster and heat really doesn't help that much. It has to be cut off and then you can pull it out bit by bit. Heat might help a little but it won't stay hot enough to pull all of the pieces anyway so a heat gun is best there too...

Note that on the e70 it is easy to cut through the lens and into internal plastic light guides so be careful when cutting away the lens. I even nicked the angel eye a bit on mine but fortunately that is really just a light tube on the e70 and not an LED or bulb so it didn't really matter (but it was still not great to cut into it slightly)

Getting the headlights out of the e70 through the fenders is actually more work than doing the lens swap its self.

I also added a laminx film over mine given that I don't trust the UV coating on the cheap lenses. I didn't do a perfect job installing that and had to pierce it in a couple of places with a needle to get bubbles out but it is still much better than yellowed lenses... I think I could do a better job on a second attempt.

-Rich

[Salty B.]

Originally Posted by rbryantaz

I also added a laminx film over mine given that I don't trust the UV coating on the cheap lenses. I didn't do a perfect job installing that and had to pierce it in a couple of places with a needle to get bubbles out but it is still much better than yellowed lenses... I think I could do a better job on a second attempt.

-Rich

Thx, I'd never heard of this product. Worth considering given the difficulty of replacing these covers (post-LCI sounds like a supreme pain in the ass; pre-LCI is four screws, pull the connector, lift it out, heat it up).

Re RTV, I hate that shit and refuse to use it on anything unless there's absolutely no alternative. Whoever installed the cheap "granite" countertops in my apartment kitchen smeared that crap everywhere when he attempted to fill the gaps.