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Subject Tech: Cleaning low beam projector len (dial-up not friendly)
     
Posted by Wui (Philly) on January 26, 2004 at 8:50 PM
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Message My Z's low beams has really low light outputs even with 9005 SilverStar bulbs. Can't see the road much at all...can only see the road with the additional of the fog lights on at the same time.

I had read many posts here regarding cleaning the projector lens for optimal light output...figured that very well be the main reason of my low beams' problem, I bought a spare sets of headlight to tackle this DIY cleaning....

Pic #1
Driver side headlight before the procedure, can't really tell how dirty the low beam projector at current condition...

Pic #2
To remove the rubber gasket, first remove the 4 metal brackets by removing the 2 screws on each metal bracket (highlighted in red box)

Pic #3
Remove the 5 metal clips (by using a flat head screwdriver to pop its off the headlight) after removed the rubber gasket & 4 metal brackets

Pic #4
Remove the 2 screws for the metal bracket

Pic #5
Remove the 2 screws for the metal bracket

Pic #6
I am using a heat gun that I bought from Home Depot to melt the butyl glue that held the headlight glass to the housing. I read that many people had success of putting the headlight in to a household oven to loosen the butyl tape/glue. I selected the head gun option because I don't want to accidentally melt my headlight in the oven.

Pic #7
I held the heat gun close to the edge of the glass & housing to melt the butyl glue. Go around the headlight slowly several time will be enough to loosen the glass from the housing.
WARNING: butyl glue is VERY sticky

Pic #8
Stick a flathead screwdriver between the glass & housing to pop loose the glass....

Pic #9
Remove the 2 screws to remove the inner housing cover

Pic #10
Found this brown form thing with 3 round pills wrapped inside...I assumed it is for trap moisture. Don't think it is needed now, so I threw it away and cleaned up all the dust.

Pic #11
Look kind of cloudy....

Pic #12
Damn it is dirty!
Make sure to clean both the inside & outside of the projector len. To do so it is much easier if you remove the projector len out of the headlight housing.
***THIS IS THE HARD PART***
The projector len housing is attached to the headlight housing by a black metal bracket which in term is attached by 1 adjustment screw (in red box in the below picture)
I was unable to loosen the black metal bracket by turning the adjustment screw (I ended up striping the head of the piece-of-crap Phillip screw) I ended up breaking the plastic white clip on the front, and used a Dremel cutting wheel to trim the high beam side housing(indicated by the red outline) to create more room the remove the black metal bracket & projector len housing.
With the help of a screwdriver & some cursing...I was able to muscle out the projector len housing.
The glare guard inside the projector len is held by the 2 screws on the bottom of the projector len. I found that by adjusting the position of the glare guard play a big part on the light focus.

Pic #13
The adjusting screw on the back of the low beam housing adjust the tilt angle of the low beam (up&down) I paid close attention to the position of the screw before I broke the white plastic clip, so I know that the low beam was at the lowest tilt position (pointing down).
Since I broke the clip, I decided to use epoxy glue to glue it down to prevent movement of the low beam if I hit a bump while driving

Pic #14
Re-assemble in reverse order. Make sure to heat up the butyl glue so it will seal the glass to the housing.

Pic #15
Cleaned low beam projector len inside the housing

Pic #16
Finished...Took me about 4 hours to do the first headlight. The second one took about 2 hours.
My first intention was to replace the stock low beam projector with Hella 90mm projector len with H9 bulb, but after see the headlight aparted, I started to doubt I willl able to do so, and don't want to spend $150 to buy the Hella 90mm projector len and screw it up. I believe with the cleaned lens right now, light output should be much improve.

Big thanks to those that posted procedures on how to take apart Z32headlights....and big thanks to Wagz for allow me to using his web hosting site to hose pictures for this tech.

East Coast Z32 Association

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."


     
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