Has anyone replaced a headlight?

[ticket2ride]

With the help of an icy driveway I very slowly bumped into a fence post (walking speed or less), and shattered the lens in my front-right headlight and now I'm trying to figure out how to replace it. I already scored a used unit on eBay and assumed it would be fairly straight forward to remove some panels and slide the old one out but no such luck.

Has anyone done this repair and know the steps? Would this be outlined in a FSM or some other manual? I've been googling and youtubeing for an hour but haven't found anyone documenting this repair and I'm stuck.

I have the frunk liner out, and the small panel next to the headlight off already. It looks like either the panel above the bumper needs to come off, or the fender needs to come off but I cant figure out either as there are fasteners I can't see/find. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Sponsored

 

[bmwhitetx]

You can get a 72-hour access to the manuals here for ~$26:
https://www.motorcraftservice.com/Purchase/ViewProduct
Don't know if the procedure would be there though, but I'm sure it'll have some help,

 

[ticket2ride]

Yup, it does have the process. I'll be back at it tomorrow

 

[ticket2ride]

Following the steps in the manual, it went pretty well. I had thought the bumper and fender might need to come off, but they didn't.
The hardest part was removing the plastic facia that runs along the top of the bumper, which required two people, flathead screwdrivers, cursing, and a lot hard pulling. I thought we were going to destroy it but it did finally come loose (the tabs are a nightmare).
The only tool I had to buy that I didn't have already, was a 1/4" air ratchet from Harbor Freight to reach the lowest bolt on the headlight itself.

 

[ticket2ride]

Yup, you can get all of the bolts out without pulling the facia (if you can reach that bottom one), but the headlight has so much bracketry on it you can't remove it until the facia is out.

I don't recall seeing any way to open the headlight itself, but I can tell you (since I shattered mine which lead to the replacement) is that the clear plastic lens is the flimsiest, weakest, most brittle plastic I've experienced on a vehicle. Ford should be ashamed of using it.

 

[ticket2ride]

No I didn't hang on to it.

Sponsored