ws6chicken

I have decided to finally share my epic headlight/front-end-clip ongoing saga, so that hopefully it might be able to help others that are in the same mess. I am going to try to keep this a living thread as I find solutions to problems or new problems come up (which, historically, they will).

A overview. Back in 2004, last Friday in September at approximately 7:00 am, I rear ended a Jeep Cherokee. It was semi dark out side so I had my headlights up, so upon impact my front bumper tucked underneath his rear bumper and proceeded to destroy all drivers side headlight related components and the cross piece that ties both headlights together. Also, the hood cracked and driver side fender.

This is where my first mistake happened, I rear ended an SUV with my headlight up. The solution to this problem is don't rear ended any thing in a Firebird .

This is a present day picture.

Being the 16 year old punk that I was, I started to try to fix the problem in all the wrong ways . I did not have no where near enough money to get a professional repair done entirely (The lowest quote I got was $2800 and one guy did not even call back). So I decided that my priority was going to be to get the headlights to function again myself. This is where mistake number #2 occurred I went to a shady guy and got knock off Taiwanese components. These components were very poor in quality and the the fit was a joke.

The installation process was straight forward I was just replacing the headlight cross member and the headlight cradle. The first true learning experiance came during the headlight door aligning process. There are about 14 adjustment that pertain to getting the doors aligned properly. The only easy way I have found to get the door aligned properly is patience and hope and .

About a year and half later I finally had some money and decided to take the car to a shop. Where mistake #3 happened every rule that has ever been posted about taking your car to a reputable shop I broke. So, be sure to do plenty of research on the forums about taking your car to a shop. I have pretty much experienced every single horror story.

After about more or less a year my First major problem occurred my passenger headlight decided it no longer wanted to stay closed. This ended up being a relative easy fix, aside from the afore mentioned alignment process. The picture below should clearly explain my fix first fix. You can read up on Firebird headlights in the sticky located in this section.


Also a piece in my headlight cradle broke off which is very important in the alignment process. I have found that you can not just glue these pieces together, but they absolutely have to be re-enforced with metal and joined with a two part adhesive. (but it ended up failing so back to the drawing board).

note: this is a OEM piece that came from the factory.

Another thing worth mentioning/showing is that the headlight door vertical alignment adjusters like to crack and break off. To fix this I took some license plate screw holders and modified them to replicate the function of those little black pieces



Now on to where I am at now. The Passenger headlight decided to not function again . So I took apart the assembly again, first getting getting some encouragement from my previous mentioned fix . Then I discovered I had some work to do. So this is going to be my next project. Now it is worthy to note that this is an option "b" and that you might be "butchering" your car as some same, the other way is to replace the headlight cross piece for a modest $695 (I believe) from the general and get to align both headlights .



Next week I plan to post my fix. And also if there is any interest I can give tips for aligning the doors now that I am going to be on my 4th time doing the process.

Thanks for reading, feedback would be much appreciated, such as if I should get more technical or detailed.