Headlight Adjustment

[brifam]

A Chinese pheasant decided to meet my bumper cover. There was no visible damage. However, that night I noticed that my driver's side headlight was aiming lower on the ground, and the light would jiggle a lot when I het a slight bump (tar strip) in the road. I cannot find a way to adjust the aim. Any suggestions?

[Eggman]

Sounds like some means of support has broken. Have you done a visual inspection yet?

[brifam]

Sounds like some means of support has broken. Have you done a visual inspection yet?

Yes, I have looked and a Professional Body repairman has looked and neither of us found anything unusual. He had even removed the bumper cover to look. He said the front of the fender isn't really held on by anything, just attached to the bumper cover I guess. After looking at the thread regarding putting in LED headlights, I'm wondering if somehow the bulb attachment mechanism has come loose, and is just allowing the bulb to jiggle inside the housing. What I really don't understand is how you adjust the aim of the headlights on either side. I cannot find any adjusting screws for vertical or horizontal adjustment of the headlight aim...

[3dplane]

Like you said,make sure the bulb is seated like it should.

The adjusters are:
One under the white cap with the red marking. The other down above the red wire (on the picture) with no cap on.Looks like 8 or 10mm bolt head.
(Image is looking at the left headlight from center out toward the left side of the car.)

[brifam]

I decided to Look real close. In fact to remove the headlight housing. To do that I took off the driver side wheel well liner. Man does it have a lot of plastic clips holding it on. Works pretty good though. A couple of hidden bolts later, and I got it out. I've discovered that the chrome reflector inside the housing is loose. Apparently I can take the housing apart, there's just a few small phillips screws holding it together apparently. I plan to disassemble and fix it. I also found the headlight adjusters under some plastic covers on the back of the light housing. I'll attach photos of those when I can figure out how to do so.

Well, discovered that the clear lens is sealed to the black housing. Here's how I got them apart. Heat an oven up, for me I did it in steps. first to 170 (the lowest setting) That didn't do much. I went up to 190, still not enough, my magic number was 210F. I put the headlight black side down on a cool cookie sheet with a paper towel on it . Note that the black plastic cannot touch any part of the oven or it will melt it. Put it in for 2 minutes ... long enough to get the sealer hot enough to loosen. then I used a couple of screw drivers prying the two pieces apart at one corner. Once I got it started I pryed with my fingers the rest of the way. Watch to make sure that none of the little clips built into the black housing snag the clear lens. Also use as wide a screwdriver blade as you can. I went to a flat pry bar as soon as it would fit in the joint. be careful cuz The clear lens will break. The black plastic melts and deforms with the prying action.

When I got the two halves apart, I backed off the headlight adusting screws all the way to get the reflector loose. there is a pivoting arm that had broken. I don't know how this happened, even with a bird hitting the lens because this part is inside and could not have been hit by the bird. Perhaps this was a manufacturing defect that would have eventually broken anyway.

The FIX. It was really hard figuring out what kind of plastic I was dealing with. The reflector said USA on it with some numbers. The Lens said Stanley on it. I think that the reflector is compression formed from material supplied by a German manufacturer and it is Polyester based with strands in it for strengthening. I had bought a "plastic Epoxy at Wal Mart that specifically said not to use it on Polystyrene (which I think might be related to polyester). So I went back to Wal Mart (they were the only ones open at 2 in the morning at this point), and bought the JB Weld for plastic, and some fiberglass mesh. I first epoxied the two pieces together and let that set, then I attached the fiberglass mesh around it with more epoxy. and then I went to bed.

Next day, it appeared to bond quite well so I heated the oven back up to 210 to get the sealer to be pliable and once heated I put the parts together. I heated the parts twice in order to get all the way around enough to get the screws back in, then I heated it again and tightened the screws down. I'm sure it's good and sealed. Then I put the unit back in the car. Apparently this fixed the problem as the headlight is aimed correctly now.

I don't know why there is a white cover on one of the two adjusting screws, perhaps it's there to keep me from fiddling with it. It remains off.