430 headlight cleaning, on the inside.

I'm fairly new to Ferraris, having recently bought a tidy little Scuderia in silver. I love the car and all the insanity it brings, as per usual, there were a few minor issues to sort out, namely broken exhaust stud which came with blown manifold gasket and a few other little things. But there remains the super annoying foggy, spidery headlight problem, which I've been told a number of times, cannot be rectified and most people have had the lights changed under Cube warranty. Well, that's not an option for me as Cube is gone and Power Normal doesn't cover it, so either I live with it or spend approx 5k on a pair of average light units. Anyway, today I set out to clean the inside of my headlight units without opening the units or spending five grand.

Using a couple of magnets, a soft jewelry case, string and a few lint free cloths, I think I did a pretty good job.

Turn your steering wheel onto full lock to give you access to panel hiding the rear of the headlight unit in the front wheelwell. A couple of 8mm bolts and you're in. Pull off the rubber protective backing to reveal the back of the headlight.

Remove the main bulb by pinching the little wire door the holds the bulb in place and with a little gentle wriggle, the thing will slide out. Unplug it and put it to one side. Whatever you do, don't touch and of the glass on the bulb, otherwise you'll be replacing it before you know it. Now unscrew four torx screws found on each corner of the lens unit.

If you don't have a swish gooseneck type camera to hand, as I didn't, you can put you iPhone onto video mode, switch the light on, shove it in the wheelwell. Now you can see everything in there nice and clear without breaking your neck. With your other hand, you can unscrew all necessary hardware.

Now gently ease out the lense. It won't come all the way out, but enough for you to slip a small, but powerful magnet, wrapped in a small cloth, placed inside and nice soft jewellery bag. It's important to tie a piece of string to the jewelry bag handles to get the thing out again. Once the bag is sitting inside the headlight unit, grab a second magnet, wrapped in a very clean soft cloth and catch the internal magnet with it.

Now watch in amazement as years of dust are pulled from the glass, leaving your light looking rather nice, especially if they're carbon.

Yes, it's exactly the same principle as cleaning a fish tank really.

I've only done the one side so far, but it really works quite well, a huge improvement on what was essentially the only part of my car that really let it down.

If anyone is interested, I can take a bunch of photos when I do the other side. May help explain the process better.

 

Photos, please. And while you're in there, you should do the LED upgrade to the parking lights!

 

Nice job! I can't wait to see the before and after photos as I have the same issue on my Scud.

 

Sorry for the delay. I've decided to take your advice and do the bulbs at the same time. They're on order, but have yet to be delivered.

Whilst I'm fumbling around cluelessly in that area of the car, I figured this may be a good a time as any to switch out the fender shields to carbon and turn signals to clear. I'm going for the monotone look, as the car is silver with red calipers. I also ordered a set of new silver center caps for the wheels to eradicate yellow altogether. Again, whilst I'm down there I'll pop the orange marker lights out and tint them. Any suggestions on a brand? I'm assuming 3M is a safe bet.

This should leave me with a super clean look and I'm excited to get in there. Doing all these little jobs together with wheels off will help speed things up and make it easier access-wise. My skinless knuckles from headlight 1 will attest to that.

 

What was the symptom of your broken exhaust stud and manifold gasket?

 

Yes; photos please. Very interested in before and after as well as your magnet+bag setup.

 

I'll hopefully get to it over the weekend.

 

This is very ingenious! Congrats...

 

So I finally found the time to do this and took a few photos along the way.

This time round I made my life far easier by removing the wheel and taking off the plastic inner arch. Actually, I needed to do this anyway as I was fitting new carbon fender shields. For the time it takes to remove the plastic, in all about 10 mins for a novice, it's worth it.

Once plastics are moved out the way like this, then remove the bulb described in the first post.

The lens/bulb housing has four torx bolts securing it.You can see three of them in the pic below in each corner. Remove each bolt being careful to ensure they don't drop!
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Now wiggle the unit back and to the side, creating a gap between the lense and the light unit body itself, giving you access to the inside of the light unit.
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Now grab you magnet (Long and flat is preferable), sandwich in a little foam, hold in place with a little soft cloth before sliding into your little soft/velvet jewelry pouch thing. Attach string to pouch and make sure it's strong. The last thing you want is a velvet jewelry pouch with a magnet stuck in your light housing.
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Now 'post' the pouch into the gap you created in the light fitting, between the lens and the housing. Take your second magnet, wrap carefully in a new clean cloth and place it on the outside of the light, as close to the magnet as possible. The magnet inside the housing should spring to life and attach itself to the magnet on the outside. Now gently and slowly rub in small movements, watching in amazement as your light fitting starts to look rather clean. Small movements keep the magnets in contact, so they can 'keep up' with each other. Larger movements will separate the magnets and you'll have to do a little fishing to get them back in touch.
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Finally, when the light is clean and you've spent some time getting into all the little corners and hard to reach places, detach the outside magnet and use the string to pull the pouch back out. Pics below show the start, middle and final result of cleaning.
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Genius!

 

+1

Now we need pictures of the carbon fender shields!

 

I'll take a few pics of the shields once the new wheel caps are on too, give the full effect! If anyone in the LA area wants to borrow my super power magnets to do this, then let me know.

 

where did all the residue end up? did it fall/settle on the carbon fiber?
how strong are the magnets?

 

Found this thread through a search. It describes cleaning the inside surfaces of the scud headlight lenses using the magnet method. Is the OP still on Fchat? Has anyone else tried this? I'm wondering how well this really works, especially when there are lots of tight corners and hard to reach places within the headlight assembly.

Also wondering if another method is possible. Specifically, I wonder if you could take a wire hanger (or other heavy gauge wire) with a cloth on the end to wipe the inner surfaces of the lens. My thinking is a wire would could access the tight corners better than a magnet placed in a piece of foam, wrapped in a cloth, and inserted inside of a jewelry pouch. One thing I don't know, however, is how hard the spidering is. Does it just wipe off with a light touch or is actually buffing necessary to remove it?

Edit: Just had another idea: Accessing the interior of the headlight assembly as described above and heating the lens from the inside with a hairdryer. May be more effective and less likely to cause damage to the lens than heating it from the outside.

 

I worked with Ferrari of Seattle on this technique. I had microfiber bags constructed, and FoS obtained some strong magnets. Unfortunately the results were less than satisfactory. (I posted in one of the 430 headlight cleaning threads details on this). It basically pushed the mess around but did not do a good job at removal. Ultimately after several tries, they gave up. I had the headlight removed and sent to Premier Autobody in Southern California. They did a great job.

 

I'm in LA, so close to Premier. What did Premier charge you to fix this, and what method did they use? Has the repair lasted or did the spidering return?

 

This was about 2.5 years ago, they charged around $900 for one headlight. They did an excellent job, but at the time, they were slow...like three or four week turn around. I spoke with the owner he said they did a lot of them and were very experienced with the issue. The disassemble the lens from the headlight bucket. He said it plagues other Ferrari models as well. He said along with the Enzo, there are a number of limited production Ferraris with CF headlights and they had done them all. He said whatever causes it, is likely to return, though perhaps at a slower rate or with less total spidering. IIRC he felt it was a combination of off gassing from the CF and humidity that creates the mess.

After 2.5 years, under very bright lighting, and up close, I can see very faint, light traces of the spidering returning today (I had to look closely, as I never noticed until you asked, and I checked). If I am standing by the headlight and looking down, I can't see it, I have to get close and look for it. To me, it still looks excellent. I suspect at 6 or 7 years out, this may have to be redone.

WARNING: There is a second outfit listed in one of the threads here that cleaned headlights, and I forget the name. But my passenger headlight got suddenly bad 6 months after having the drivers side done. So I called and had it sent to this other outfit (also in Southern CA). They only charged $750 and guaranteed 4 or 5 day turn around. The results sucked. There was still obvious traces of spidering! I called and asked whats up. Their excuse was if they totally removed it, they would have to remove the UV coating on the inside of the lens, which they refuse to do (wish they mentioned this before I sent my headlight!). Now, two years later the spidering is much worse and needs to be redone. I need to send it to Premier and get it done properly.

 

Thanks for the info! I saw there are multiple places that go by the name "Premier Auto Body" here in LA. Do you happen to know which one you used?

 

Sure! Let me be clear, I did my headlights at separate times. Drivers side at Premier, and passenger at a different place. At the time I had my drivers side done, the passenger had hardly any spidering….then over winter, in the span of 6 months it seem to "bloom" and get really bad.

 

http://www.premiermotorsport.us/ Call and speak with the owner to confirm services, cost and turnaround time.

 

I can vouch for premier. All my friends take their Ferrari’s and even some multi million dollar HyperCars there. Dave is amazing and very knowledgeable and his shop is great to see. Just beware, price and timelines will be very big.


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