Fog Light Repair

[crudzinskas]

So my fog light lens cracked from a rock or salt while driving. I think it was just a fluke as the glass on the lens seems quite thick, maybe even more so than the windshield glass. I looked for a replacement piece of glass, but I had no luck finding anything. Before paying $35-$70 for a replacement depending on if I went aftermarket or OEM, I decided to try to make a simple repair using some polycarbonate. I was able to buy a PC sheet for $4 that was big enough to give me 6 tries at making a replacement.

 

But all I did was use a jigsaw to cut the sheet into an oval shape that was roughly the size of the old glass piece. My first attempt, I wanted to try and form the plastic around the housing, but that ended up not working as the PC formed bubbles when it was heated enough for it to be pliable. So I cut a second piece that was a more exact sized and used some caulking to to attach it and to make a water tight seal. The old glass came out easily as it was just held on with some silicone. I let everything dry overnight before reinstalling. I think the finished product looks pretty good, especially for only the price to fix it. The only problem I see is the PC yellowing over time since Im not sure if the one I bought was particularly UV stabilized. I suppose I could get some UV coating to put on it at some point. Another issue could be the caulking could deteriorate overtime as I did not use pure silicone. However, since the plastic housing around the metal fog lamp was polypropylene, I figure the actual temperature wouldn't be too hot in use. We'll see how it holds up long term, but the good thing the repair could be made again with slightly higher quality materials if needed.

 

To access the area, you definitely need to jack up the car to have room to poke your head around. The clips to remove are pretty obvious and the plastic panel is very flexible so you can just bend it down enough once the clips are out to look in so that you don't need to remove the full piece. The assembly itself is held on with 1 10mm bolt and a plastic clip.

 

If anyone has any questions let me know and I can go into more detail! If the fix fails immediately, I'll update this, but I don't expect it to.

Fog Light Repair 2.pdf