Help replacing headlight bulbs

[Win]

3 hours later I am all done. Very easy task but very difficult to manuever with the wheel on.

[knucklehead]

Congrats Nguyen,
For those who are thinking about doing this mod. I truly believe the time to take off the wheel and light assembly may or may not save you time, but makes the job much much easier.

[Serebo1]

Originally Posted by Win

Are you referring to the mounting nuts in sandsmuseum.com diagram?

http://www.sandsmuseum.com/cars/elis...headlamps.html

Hey Win-

Sorry I didn't see this yesterday - sounds like you got her done though...

[David Craig]

I found this thread to be quite helpful. However on the 2009 Elise things turned out to be even easier.

The general procedure is:

1) Remove front wheel
2) Remove wheel liner
3) Find and remove the appropriate circular rubber cover by pulling on its tab
4) Remove the electrical connector to the light
5) Press the W-shaped end of the silver clip towards the light and then sideways a bit
6) Remove and replace the light bulb

The low and high beam lights can be done as described. The daytime running light I haven't tried but from the pictures it looks like you just reach up and grab it. After that I'd imagine you would press it in and rotate, but that's just a guess.

[David Craig]

The fifth picture of the previous post shows the rubber tab that covers the lights as well as the screws removed from the wheel liner.

The pictures below show:

1) What the clip looks like after it has been released.
2) The high beam headlight socket after the light has been removed
3) The low beam headlight, clip, and connector
4) Above the low beam, showing the daytime running light

By the way as mentioned if you are new to this, try to remove the wheel. Once you have done this procedure the first time and understand how the clips work, I suppose you would not need to remove the wheel.

How long did it take me? It took 3.5 hours! I wanted to replace the low beam but I accidently replaced the high beam?! After that I noticed my mistake and then replaced the low beam too.

[evilfij]

Thank you! My 07 exits just lost a bulb so I have to tackle this. What replacement bulb did you use?

[evilfij]

The low beam is an H7 on an 07 exige S.

The metal screw shown above causes some issues as it had rusted. I don't know why they used that in a wheel well. It came out, and to prevent future issues I slathered it in anti sieze and then sprayed with corrosion spray.

My lower screws were plastic plugs with plastic screws. One had a thick metal washer as a spacer.

Key point. The low beam is the TOP light. If it were not for the poster above I would not have caught on to this.



Took 20 min start to finish.

[Awman]

I just finished the dip bulb (low beam) replacement for the first time. On my '06 Exige, I removed the whole front wheel liner - three screws (there was no smaller access panel). I found it easiest to remove the wheel and use the tip about leaving the screws threaded in to "push" the cover away from the body (thanks!).

I left the headlight assembly in and found it pretty easy to remove the clips and bulb using small needle nose pliers rather than my fingers. I also found it easier to slide the bulb out if I unclipped the ground connector to the dip bulb light housing (this was my wife's suggestion). Also, make sure to line up the samll bumps on the bulb with the holes in the mount as discussed above.

Overall, this was pretty easy and took me about an hour from start to clean-up.