I'm a newbie and have a request to the community. I recently picked up a 2004 S4 and noticed that the driver's side headlamp assembly has been trapping moisture and causing my xenon lamp to become dipped. My car has recently gone into the shop so I had a chance to take the assembly home to disassemble the front lens from the back housing. I was told today at the shop to heat the assembly around the housing with a heat gun and separate the 2 parts....well 2.5hrs later heating the prying the assemble is still together and as I'm damaging the back housing, more and more...I'm starting to worry whether I'm going to kill the housing and then be screwed. I was also told that they heard you can bake it...now this is where I'm putting the question out there...can anyone help me take apart the housing from the front lens will be the man....Any insight from the community on their way that separate the 2 parts will be much appreciated.

 

how hot are you heating it? the glue needs to become about 500 degrees before you can seperate it, but make sure you dont rub it off, otherwise its not going seal back up. you will need a screwdriver to pry all the way around it, and its going to be tight, so it takes some elbow grease and finess.

 

I used a heat gun on high and believe me I heated it up as best as I could and took pretty good care on watching and prying the 2 parts...my center of my palm is shot...and luckily I didn't puncture or crack the outer lens. Do you recommend taking out the bulbs and igniting module before I bake it in the oven? I already took out the bulbs and I'm assuming to take out the igniting mod so I don't damage anything. Sounds like I should gradually heat up the oven to 500 and carefully watch the lens not to over cook it. I was at a glass shop and they told me to use this black gorilla snot glue/ I picked up some black glass silicone to reseal so I think I'm all good. Any help again would be greatly appreciated.

 

I took everything that I could out, just not to damage anything...got it in the oven and slowing raising the temp from 250 up higher and checking it frequently...tell ya how it goes...

 

yeah I had to stop that operation, the top screw clips that connect the assembly to the car wilted and deformed to structure a bit...I'm just going to stop this whole thing...going to go back to heat gun and reform the top flange piece a bit to get it's shape back to normal as best as I can and will just have to reseal the damage I've already done to it before I destroy it and have to spend buku dollars on a new assembly