Bartamos, thank you the continued interest. I have now welded nuts to the housings and hope that will be the end of it. They are not pretty but should be functional.
The problem is two fold, to install the lights into the grille the lens can not be in place because the overall size becomes too large to fit into the grille cross bar spacing as required to get the mounting studs through the mounting holes. The outside lens mounting screws are too close to the ends of the grille to provide access to a loose nut. I suppose an access hole coult be made in the inner fender that would allow installation of a nut through the hole but that would be challenging to locate.
I suspect the original problem is from the manufacturer of the housings as both lights had the original "nut" retention loss on the same side. One I could have used a loose nut but the other I could not because of the access problem.
