Technical  Misted Headlight

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Technical  Misted Headlight

Tried drying it out but it's misted up again already.

Guess there's nothing else for it but to take it out and change it :(

Or reseal it. See my previous posts and others. Just drying it out is only addressing the effect, you need to fix the cause.

Take the light unit off. As described above check all seals and covers. Also check around where the lens seals to the body. If in doubt reseal with small amounts of sealant.

To properly dry it out, remove all bulbs, place lamp in airing cupboard overnight, bulb holes upwards. Refit the next day when warm and dry. If you've fixed the leaks, all should be well. Every expense spared.
 
I've ended up buying a new one off ecp for £138 after several botched attempts at trying to fix the misted one.

Mind you, it did survive a 55mph disagreement with a deer a few years ago with only the top bracket being broken in the incident so I suppose it could have been a lot worse.

Hoping for good weather on Sunday to get stuck into the removal and refit.
 
Mind you, it did survive a 55mph disagreement with a deer a few years ago with only the top bracket being broken in the incident so I suppose it could have been a lot worse.

Now there's a clue - so only the top bracket was broken was it?!

So we'll let Fiat's headlights off the hook then. I think it's allowed to leak after that.

Was the bootful of venison worth more than the headlight?
 
It was worse than that Doofer, the thing got up and ran away! A farmer in an old Isuzu pickup a couple of cars back was probably even more annoyed than I was. Whilst the deer was lying in the road he said he was going back to his truck to get something. I've always wondered what it might have been ;)

From personal experience I can safely say that if you're going to hit a deer the Croma is the car to do it in. Other than the now misted headlight the only other signs of the impact were a small crease in the front wing and a bunch of fur between the headlight and the wing.

I cleaned out the fur and left the wing as it was.
 
That's the new headlight fitted. Actually taking the front end apart to get at it was fairly intuitive but getting all of the rusted bolts off was a nightmare. Apart from the bolt that's hidden behind the wheel arch panel anyway.

Putting it back together was quite easy.

Fingers crossed it solves the problem.
 
Yes, horrible. Those self-tappers round the front edge of the wheelarch are rubbish.

I hacked/drilled mine out*, and replaced them with M6 stainless steel hex head bolts, along with M6 spire clips to replace the clips that were there. They looked a bit blingtastic though - like shiny jewels from a distance. So I painted primer then colour-matched touch-up paint onto them. They've been there a year or two, pretty much invisible really - better than rusty blobs anyway.

* I say drilled them out, more like span them round with the drill until their heads melted through the plastic. It left the hole the right size for the M6 bolts.

I did a similar job under the front edge of the bumper, where it meets the undertray, didn't bother painting them though. The only originals left are the bolts around the bonnet latch. Some of these were a bit rough, so I gave them a pickling in WD40 overnight followed by a good dab of grease.

So I'm free of nasty philips-head self tappers anyway.
 
My drill wasn't really getting anywhere so I ended up borrowing a Dremel and ground the tops off so I could pull the wheel arch liner clear.
 
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