Did a search on here and didn't turn up much besides this: https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...eadlights.html

But, I was told a year ago by the dealer that this is a common issue, but what happens is the bolt (side of car, not center), gets water dripping onto it, causes oxidation (rust) and siezes the bolt to the socket's threads, which then breaks apart from the housing (why the threads and socket around it are seperate is beyond me, tally it up to another bad design). Anyways, so, when you turn this bolt, the threads around the bolt spin freely with it, thus you cannot get the bolt out, thus the headlight won't come out. Dealer told me they normally have to drill the bolt out and replace the socket.

Has anyone had to do this themselves? Curious of any tips before I drill in there and break something a bit more cruicial.

Thanks in advance.

 

lol forum renders useless again.

for those others searching that come upon this, I dremel'd off the head of the bolt and got the washer off, which let me remove the headlight after freeing the other 3 bolts.

 

I drilled mine out and drove to the dealership who had them in stock as they know it break far too often when removing the headlights.

 

I cut that bracket off and stuck with 3 mounting points. It holds just fine. Just be sure to use some anti-seize on the rest!

 

This is exactly what I did. PITA to get my blade in there to cut the bracket though.

 

Mine was closest to the fender, so I got the dremel wheel in there just fine. If it was the inside, different story. The other side ended up being seized too, but the whole bolt assembly just spun free and popped out. I think it caused some other damage in the plastic housing, but as mentioned above, 3 holds firm.

 

It happened on my passenger side headlight with the screw lowest and closest to the wheel arch. I tried all sorts of stuff to try and get the thing free from that housing. It's a really cheap design. The only way to remove it is drilling the head off, removing the headlight, and removing the old screw by whatever means you choose. I put antiseize on all the other headlight screws to prevent this. I'm planning on using a longer replacement bolt with a big washer and nut to improvise a fix.

 

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I found a good solution to this today, inspired by the YouTube video here:
He was able to melt the plastic around the brass nut by putting the 10mm socket in a drill & spinning the bolt until the plastic around the nut melted, and then pulling the bolt & nut together out of the plastic.

For me, it was even easier... I first squirted some penetrating oil (PB Blaster) in around the nut, and then spun the bolt with a drill as he did in the video, stopping the drill when I saw a bit of smoke come out from the nut. That melted the plastic around the nut just as it did in the video... but when the plastic solidified again just a couple seconds later, it hardened around the nut so that I was able to unscrew the bolt normally. I even reused the nut, putting a bit of anti-seize on all the bolts (although I'll probably replace the nut with a new one in the near future).

Hope this helps anybody else who might have this problem.