First time getting home during daytime, with the garage being empty, so I figured I might as well fix all the small sloppy things I missed last time. Plus, my replacement passenger side headlight has been sitting in my closet for a while now.
Lots and lots of work involved for a very small, almost unnoticeable change.
In order to access the headlights, I once again had to remove my front bumper. Easy stuff now. While I lied under my bumped to remove the mounting screws, I got a whole mess of engine dirt in my eyes, and the bottom of my front bumpers still just as scratched up, but this time with additional colors. How I ended up with red/green/blue paint scratches under my car I have no idea.
Then I had to heat gun open my passenger headlight to grab the clear lens. The seal wasn't too tough this time, which might explain why I had condensation in my headlights. Then I also had to heat gun open my replacement headlight.
Then, I completely removed and disassembled my headlight internals. I didn't do this last time out of laziness; but it seriously takes a whole lot of work unscrewing 3 very stiff 3" long screws. Seriously it does, and it means the headlights needs to be reaimed. I also painted certain parts of the inside the projector to reduce the "squirrel finder" glare. They never really hit the signs they're supposed to light up anyways. If I want to read signs, I'll just use my high beams instead *whistles*.
I also refocused my lens so that the cutoff actually looks like a cutoff, not distorted with a bump smack center.
Then it was sunset, so I put everything back together, sealed the headlight using my replacement--not melted--headlight cover, put the bumper back on, and cleaned up and called it a day.
!-Break to a few short side stories on other stuff
Saturday morning, yes, morning. Our water heater needed fixing (and so does everything else, but today was water heater day); the pressure release valve completely corroded shut, the main water-in control valve doesn't work, and the water and mineral deposit in the tank needed to be flushed out. Long story short, had to shut off the house water source cause the water heater water source shut off didn't work, then slowly slowly drain all 30gallons out before replacing the value. Then everything worked after that. Nasty colored water got flushed out.
Over the course of two weeks, doggy managed to break the welding holding together the locking hinge on our metal gate leading outside and separated our wooden door from the hinge leading to the hillside. As a temporary fix, mom moved our wooden rocking patio chair to block off the path to those gates. Doggy breaks everything.
Wednesday night, mom comes home and couldn't find doggy. Clever dog figured that he can crawl under the rocking patio chair to reach the other side. Then he went hillside exploring; normally that's perfectly fine, except that hillside has access to the backyard of everyone on our street, and on the street at the bottom of the hill. It also takes him a while to come back when we go out to call for him, but before he always came back, usually really really dirty. This time he didn't. So my mom spent all night looking for him. Turns out he got caught by animal control. He jumped down into someone's backyard, and couldn't jump out. They called animal control, then doggy gave animal control hell. Supposedly, it took many of them a very long time to actually catch him, then they weren't strong enough to actually drag him into the car, and probably got flung around a lot, before they finally just held him in place and got him into a cage. Then they spent the next 12 hours trying to get the tag from him. I'm guessing he tried to bite them. When they finally got the tag, they called our vet, in Walnut, who gave them at Walnut phone number that didn't work, then gave them mom's work number of where she worked 6 years ago, in West Co. Luckily she went back to work for that company so they actually got a hold of her. Course they were completely baffled at how a dog from Walnut got to Monterey Park. Then they didn't dare putting the collar back on him. When they got in contact with my mom, she said she'd come pick him up during lunch, they responded with, "NO PICK HIM UP IMMEDIATELY". When she pick him up, he flung the cage he was in around and completely trashed the place. Then charged straight out, causing much grief to everyone working there. They were all like, "nooooooo, he took so much effort to catch". Mom then called him back, put his collar on him, and he dragged her out. Then animal control just threw all paperwork into the car and he obediently stayed in the house after that.
My lawn looks like this!
It's a wonderful patch of weeds. There are a few blades of grass here and there, but the weeds make the lawn pretty green too! People driving by wouldn't be able to tell with just a glance.--end tangent.
Saturday afternoon I decided to wash my car, I didn't get very far cause the house water was shut off. After the water heater was fixed I got around to washing it.
Well I figured, since I was going to get dirty washing the car, might as well disassemble my driver side headlight to refocus that lens and reduce glare too. So once again, removed bumper, opened up headlights, disassembled everything inside, put everything back together, and then back onto the car.
So then both headlights were correctly focused, but not properly aimed. When it was dark out, after I ate dinner with connie+friends, turns out my driver side was aimed so far up that it could light up street signs on traffic lights from the stop line, significantly higher than most people's high beams. My passenger side was aimed so low that it only went about 20ft in front of me. I probably pissed off a bunch of people when I was looking for nice dark place with a big empty wall.
They're still not perfectly aimed, they don't point perfectly straight, one of them is slightly sideways, but that's ok, as long as the height is correct. I also have them aimed slightly higher than what I had before, because the bumps of light are gone.
Stock:
Before:
After:
There's still a little bit of glare (I actually couldn't see it in person, but the camera caught it). But the cutoff is a lot sharper from farther distances now, while maintaining the same amount of blue/purple flicker.Next thing I'll do to these is make them twice as bright! But before that, some other side projects I have in mind... foglights, LED tail lights...
Plus, I have a cool new paperweight, taken out of my extra headlight.
It'll come in handy when I want to retrofit another projector to replace the high beam reflector. Something I might do much much MUCH later.
