The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Need new headlight ring seals?

Yours may not be doing a very good job. You can purchase them from any of the usual suspect vendors or you can make your own. If you choose to make your own please know they'll cost less, you won't have to pay shipping fees and they'll probably seal better.

Assuming you chose door number 2, please go to your local auto parts store and purchase a bit more than 4 feet of 1/4" vacuum hose. O'Reilly's is not known for being the least expensive and it was $1.20 a foot there. Maybe 50 inches or so. Cut 25 inches of it and using a fresh single edge razor blade carefully slit through only one side of the vacuum hose keeping your cut as close to a straight line as possible. On mine there were numbers in white every 6 inches or so and I just aimed to cut on one side of them. Take your time doing this. Now slip it over the lip of the headlight ring as you see I've done in the first image below and replace your 4 clips. Please note the one at the top is diametrically opposed to the bottom mounting screw hole. The top clip is made so that it matches a slot in your headlight mounting piece. The two clips on each side are the same and the bottom one is slightly different. Images of those below.

When you replace your headlight ring you may need to put some Armor-All on it or maybe some dish soap. It will fit tightly now so you won't get any water nor dirt in there. Hope it helps.

I was about to order new headlight seals, but now you got me thinking. My seals are old and crunchy. I'm going to take a look and see if this will work on my headlights. Thanks for the idea!!

Good post Jon. I'm sure there are lots of members with crunchy headlight ring seals.

Thanks for being helpful. This will also be useful to me and more others. Great idea and again thanks for sharing.

Glen

Good! I hope they do help and thanks for replying to the post. I have an idea this approach will work in others (maybe even the older VW beetles), too.

When I've cut hose for similar purposes in the past, I run a piece of wire or rod of appropriate diameter through the hose to keep it straight.

This also has the added benefit of preventing the razor blade from accidentally cutting through the other side of the hose.

I ended up trying it a different way on my '46 head light ring. I had some 5mm vacuum hose on the shelf and only cut it to length. I removed the old crunchy material and it had a flat wire ring inside. So I sprayed silicone inside the hose and pushed the flat wire in. 5mm is .1968 inches, so not quite 1/4 inch (.25). I'm going to pick up some 1/4 inch hose and try to get a tighter seal.

Update: I picked up some 1/4 inch hose and it has a tighter seal now. Not sure if it's perfect, but I'm OK for now.