Euro H4 Swappout

As quite an afterthought, the previous owner of this car threw in a set of Euro-style H4 headlights.

They were pretty beat up.  Lots of road wear, a visible crack in one of the glass lenses, and entirely the wrong color (guards red trim... very wrong).  I appreciated the gesture but didn't think much about it at the time, as I figured these were just headlamps and wouldn't be difficult or expensive to upgrade from the odd looking U.S. spec "sugar-scoops" when I was ready.

Euro H4 Headlights.

I later learned that these lights cost well over $300 a piece to buy new, and vintage were at least that much, so I decided to have a hand at restoring the included freebies.

The metal trim rings were red and pretty dinged up.  I knew first thing that I would either have to change the color, or rethink the direction I wanted to go with the car entirely.  And after some sanding, I quickly learned that the soft metal trim rings were beyond my skill level when it came to patiently working out dents and imperfections, of which there were many.  I rough sanded and put a couple coats of flat black on them, shelved the project, and forgot about it for the time being.

A month or two later I found a set of nice and straight, dent-free cosmetic trim rings in "gris argent metallic" (aka: silver) for sale on ebay.  One $50 snipe bid later,  I had them shipping to my door.

So this cosmetic trim ring solved the problem - they cleaned up well and I was able to get them fitted and primed without issue.

I also had to work out the issue of the pitted and foggy glass.  After much polishing and sanding, I gave up on the idea of buffing out the glass - there were simply too many pits, and most were deep enough where it would be next to impossible to work them out.  I instead decided to try 3 wet layers of gloss clear coat.  Damn if it didn't work like a charm:

BOSCH!

I managed to completely strip the adjuster screws that stubbornly reside in the inner trim ring.  They are held in position via a thin metal clip, and undoing them turned out being their undoing, as they were rendered completely useless.  Impossible to find substitutes, I resorted to buying some more common 64 mm M4 pan-head screws from my local hardware guy and got to work grinding them to the right shape/size to fit the recessed dimples of the inner trim ring.

The clear plastic concave "washers" that fit around the adjuster screw heads were also completely shot, so I quickly fabricated a set courtesy of an empty Poland Spring bottle and a Dremel tool.

Re-assembled with fresh stainless adjusters and shiny glass.

Installed!