About six months after buying the car, and following many washes, polishes and general admiring of my new coupe, it was a friend that pointed out to me that the car had two different styles of headlight. How I never noticed I am not quite sure, but after the obvious was pointed out to me I could suddenly see the elephant in the room, which unfortunately meant that every time I looked at the car the mismatched lights was all I could see.
The difference was that one headlight was the original type with a lovely bevelled glass lens, the other was a replacement from a later series 2 model which has a flat lens and H4 written on the glass. The difference is subtle and the majority of people would never have noticed, but to me this scar on her face had to go!
Follow a few months of searching on-line, a set of bevelled headlights came up for sale on Gumtree and I snapped them up for a very reasonable $80AUD
As soon as I got home with my new purchase I set to work removing the headlights from the car before dismantling them, and the new units. With all four units in pieces, all parts were cleaned, before I selected the best bits and built up two good, matching headlight units.
This was all very straight forward and only required a few screwdrivers. My only advice would be to handle the reflectors with extreme care. Not knowing how fragile they were, I attempted to wipe one of the dirtier reflectors with a damp cloth to remove the grime but discovered that this was enough to remove the silver coating! So, of to the bin with that piece.
With the new headlights assembled and looking significantly better as a matching pair I re-installed them in the car, remembering not to refit the finishing chrome trim at this point as I would need to check the alignment of the light beam.
New set with bevelled glass lenses sourced...
Headlights removed from car...
All bits cleaned and best parts selected...
New matching set ready to be installed...
Left over bits. You can clearly see the two different styles of glass. The one on top has much squarer edges, this is the series 2, H4 lens. Reflector in RHS unit has no silver coating left after a gentle wipe with a cloth. DO NOT DO THIS! Also fog light reflector on same unit has no silver left and rust is setting in...
New matching set installed minus the chrome trim so that headlight beam can be adjusted.
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