Removing Turn Signal Lenses

[Gary Lewis]

Today I removed the headlight "doors" on Big Blue to enable replacing the headlights tomorrow.  And in doing so I decided to freshen up the black paint on the doors, which required removing the turn signal lenses.  However, I've had very bad luck getting those sheet metal nuts off the studs on the lenses, so I was apprehensive and proceeded with caution.

The first of the plastic nuts came off, albeit with a lot of twisting back and forth trying to keep it from breaking the stud.  But the second one broke off in spite of handling it very carefully.

Fortunately I have a stash, but of those only one is the right color to match the other one, so I wanted to be very careful getting it off the door it was mounted on.  So I sprayed the stud with Teflon lube, but while I was able to get the nut off w/o breaking the stud, it really didn't seem to help.

The next test was with Mobil 1 synthetic wheel bearing grease, and that didn't really seem to help much either.  So before I broke that stud off I tried heat on it, and that made a huge difference.  I can't say that the grease helped or not, but the heat seemed to make the plastic soft and the nuts came off fairly easily.  In fact, you could feel the difference when backing them off.

Given that, I pulled the lens off the passenger's side headlight door using grease and heat, and had no difficulties.  So that is my go-to process in the future.

[ArdWrknTrk]

Good to hear you've got a technique!
As you know those nuts were made for assembly, not for service.

If you were removing the lens to replace a broken or otherwise damaged one snapping the stud off isn't an issue.
I also expect that the plastic was a lot more resilient 40 years ago.

[Gary Lewis]

Yes, it is easy to one off if you don't care.  Turn the nut right or left and off it comes easily.    But if you want it off in one piece it'll take much more time.

And you are right, the nuts dig in very well so don't like coming off the stud.  But the heat and grease, or maybe just the heat, seems to soften the plastic up enough to get them off.  At least it did for 3 out of 3 that I tried, which is an all-time record for me.

[BigBrother-84]

Good to know, thanks Gary.

Although I hope to not have to take them off, I'll memorize your trick!

[Gary Lewis]