2025-10-16 Headlight Surrounds

Trying to track down the flaky wiring to the headlights, the outside rubber surrounds needed to come off.  The surrounds have embedded washers that the screws.  Well, the washers all fell out 😡  There is nothing to hold them on anymore

Looking around the web, tried to see what others have done.  Here are the ones I found

• Glue replacement washers back in place.
• Screw replacement washers into the surrounds.
• Take plastic drywall anchors and embed them in the surrounds

I decided to do the drywall anchor thing.  The screws are M5 and found #10 drywall anchors. First, cut them off at about 5/8"  

Then, with a little RTV, I just screwed them into the surround.  The next day, cut the excess RTV flush with the surface.  

The next day, the final adjustments 

Need to drill out the anchor to take the M5 screw, and I think it was a 13/64" since the head of the screw is not that large.  I did need to get new screws, and I ended up using M5 x 30mm

The next step was cleaning the rubber itself.   A little Scotch-Brite pad and parts cleaner.

I have used vaseline on plastic to bring them back, so I tried it on the rubber. The goal is to add some moisture back.  Well, it didn't work as well as the hard plastic.  

The end result speaks for itself