Raining cats and dogs here, the last 2/3 of the day. Thunder and lightning, as well.
Man! And I thought that hailstones at 70MPH on a motorcycle hurt!
I'm glad that you've got it made. That was mostly a suggestion for future reference.
They were tiny little cats and dogs.
Ok, here is where I am today.
I had to go ahead and take off the grill, then take off that headlight backing plate.
Reason being, I couldn't complete the repair of the plastic plate, nor could I get the clips back on the headlights.
Here is a pic of the plate laying on top of the hood. Did this to show the bare front of the truck too.
I have already made the repair to the plate, and put the headlights on.
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Now here is the back of that plate, with the headlight installed.
The old clips almost all broke, when I took them off, without removing that plate from the truck. My advice, if you are going to change your headlight housings is that you go ahead and remove that plate, before you try to remove the clips. With it laying on the bench, or the ground in front of you, you might be able to remove the clips without breaking them.
Reason you'll want to do that.. The nice shiny ones there... Dorman product. About as robust as 4 or 5 layers of aluminum foil glued together. maybe not even THAT robust because at least you'd also have the glue.
Just pushing one on with your FINGER... you'll crumple them instantly, if things are not all lined up perfectly.
You can also see the 4 bolts that I used to hold my metal plate in place. That worked out perfectly! Glad I did that.
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Seriously. It isn't that much trouble to tear everything down to that point anyway. And it makes removing and replacing the housings, a breeze. (An you are most likely to be able to save the beefy factor clips.
If I can get some beefy clips in the future, I might consider taking this back apart again, to replace those again. But for now, it is going together with my hopes that it will stay.
Of course if those clips fall apart in use, I WILL be back in there to repair it again. And I won't do it again, without some better clips.