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Last spring Bambi's mom ran out in front of my car late at night and I hit her in the rump after slowing down to about 25 mph (from 40). No idea what happened to her, she kept running so I didn't come to a complete stop after hitting her (was pretty freaked out). After pulling over down the road I inspected the damage and found that it was a lot more mild than I was expecting. There was a small dent in the hood, but the driver side headlight had a large crack in the lens with one chunk missing. More disturbingly I noticed that there was deer fur lodged in the crack and some of it was inside the light housing.
I didn't bother making an insurance claim since none of it hurt drivability or compromised safety. After removing the headlight I saw that much of the rear was cracked as well with a few pieces missing, the tabs had also been broken off. Since replacement LED headlights are not exactly cheap I decided to try to put it back together myself.
Lots of plastic welding and JB weld later I repaired the back and created new tabs. Most of the broken pieces ended up inside the headlight so after opening it up I was able to shake them out (along with more deer fur). I plastic welded the crack on the front and found the missing piece then added some clear gorilla glue.
My Frankenlight was completely functional and perfectly aligned. Eventually I started to tire with resealing the lens every so often to keep moisture out, but I still didn't want to have to drop the money on an entire headlight since the rest of it was fine. I got lucky and found a used one on eBay that was all busted on the rear with broken tabs, but had an intact lens.
The following pictures were during the removal of that lens to swap onto my headlight. Since it was sacrificial I decided to tear the entire thing apart out of curiosity.
I didn't bother making an insurance claim since none of it hurt drivability or compromised safety. After removing the headlight I saw that much of the rear was cracked as well with a few pieces missing, the tabs had also been broken off. Since replacement LED headlights are not exactly cheap I decided to try to put it back together myself.
Lots of plastic welding and JB weld later I repaired the back and created new tabs. Most of the broken pieces ended up inside the headlight so after opening it up I was able to shake them out (along with more deer fur). I plastic welded the crack on the front and found the missing piece then added some clear gorilla glue.
My Frankenlight was completely functional and perfectly aligned. Eventually I started to tire with resealing the lens every so often to keep moisture out, but I still didn't want to have to drop the money on an entire headlight since the rest of it was fine. I got lucky and found a used one on eBay that was all busted on the rear with broken tabs, but had an intact lens.
The following pictures were during the removal of that lens to swap onto my headlight. Since it was sacrificial I decided to tear the entire thing apart out of curiosity.









