What do you do if you have a super expensive factory hid, light and lens is all beat up and you want to replace the lights, but they cost like two grand in this video. I'm going to show you exactly what to do and how you can save a whole bunch of money. Okay, so my boy lotech gave me this evo light a long time ago. Now, full disclosure, this thing is wrecked: it's not good for anything, but i am going to be making a future video where i drill a big fat hole right in the front of it.

I run a funnel through the high beam side and i practice because for my guy mike, i am building something really special with a set of depot aftermarket headlights, i'm going to use the depot lights specifically for that job, but in this video i'm going to show You what i would do if i were in the position of a guy, who has some very expensive lights like for a lexus, is 250 or, like i said, the evo, or any light that has really expensive internal parts, that to replace that whole light is super Expensive, but you just want a new lens like if you've got something all scratched up like this. Here's, the hack, i'm just going to tell you straight up. You don't got to wait till the end of the video, but you should watch to the end anyway, because i have a really dope announcement directly from depot for you and a really cool opportunity. But before that the hack is get a set of aftermarket depot lights.

Stick them in the oven, remove just the lens off of those lights. Stick them on to your factory originals, it's the same exact lens, but all the internals that cost so much money will still be in your original lights. That's the hack! Let's actually show you what that looks like step number one preheat, your oven, don't ever stick lights in a preheating oven, because it's trying to get the temperature quick, which means it's getting hotter way. Faster ovens vary mine's super dope.

It uses convection air moving around. So it's not that big of a deal but either way i'm not going to stick this light in that oven until it already tells me that it's up to temperature and that temperature is 220 degrees, fahrenheit not celsius silly. You wouldn't put 220 celsius that'd cook. These things like into a puddle of plastic, so preheat your oven, 220., once it's at temperature, we're going to stick this thing in for seven minutes, total it's gon na soften the glue, not the plastic.

What about the bulbs? What about the wires? You don't have to worry about any of that they're made for that environment. If you think about it, this bulb right here gets freaking hot super super hot. You really think that 220 degrees fahrenheit is too hot for a bulb that turns on with burning xenon gas inside spoiler alert. It is not too hot for that, so you can just leave all your bulbs, all your wires, all that stuff inside of the actual light cook them, and the only thing that's going to happen is the glue around the perimeter of the lens is going to heat Up it's going to soften and then we are very easily going to be removing it from the housing from the bucket right here.

If you don't know about the terms the bucket the lens, the ballast, the bulbs, all that stuff, i actually put a book together, so that is below this video on my merch shelf. You could pick it up anytime or you could join the online course. That's on flyrod.com, so i'll link all that stuff up in the description below. Let's tear this lens off what you're gon na do in the case of removing a lens that you don't need anymore, because it's messed up.

Maybe it's got a big scratch. You don't have to be too crazy about it. I wouldn't do this normally, if you stick a lens straight down on a work surface, like you see every stupid person on youtube, that's trying to show you how to work on your lights and actually mess them up in the process. They don't take care to at least put a dirty little mat now i take better care than that, but if there's any little clips or anything on the back side, this is typically where you would find them.

I know on this lens. It's really weird. It actually has these weird little tabs right there and then there's a couple of these little clips too. So i'm just gon na use a pick really quick, see if i can get this off from the front side.

Four screws total come on and these screws actually will be usable again a lot of times. What happens is the screws when you take them out of a headlight lens, will be super super skinny and then, when you put them back in they strip, they actually break through the plastic, because it's it's not a not strong enough in this case, we're all good To go now there is that screw, but that's actually holding the internal bezel in here this black part, that's holding it down to the bucket, which means nothing is attached to this clear lens. That's a good thing for the evo. If it's a wrx everything's attached to that lens, you got to be a little bit more careful anyway.

We're going to go seven minutes on the timer! Stick it on a couple pieces of wood here in the oven, make sure that nothing is touching on the bottom side and we're good to go. We're going to cook it for seven minutes at 220 degrees fahrenheit, not celsius set our timer. I've actually left lights in an oven way too long, seven minutes on the timer and be ready to work as soon as they come out. 2.

000 years later. All right, seven minutes just went off. You just have to trust me because you don't want to have to hear that alarm. Okay, actually, let's go back.

Let me say that again all right now i tell you this in a lot of videos, but i like to double double glove. I like to get some gorilla grip gloves or something equivalent where the back side's soft the bottom side has some sort of protection for your fingers and instead of ruining these things every single time you open up a set of lights and get glue all over them, Especially if your ceiling lights, i like to get some disposable gloves, stick them right over the top, and now we've got the protection of the gorilla grip gloves, but the disposability of the top layer all right, so i'm gon na get these guys um. I really don't need to go hardcore and have both of them done, but i did want to give you that quick little demo, so it's been seven minutes. We're taking these things out and all that we really need to do is make sure that the glue is soft enough, first off and second off any little tabs.

Now, there's some there's some damage on these lights and i'm going to lift up on the plastic. Now, if the plastic is super rigid to the point where it doesn't want to move, then these little guys will break in this case. It doesn't really matter because these lights are trashed, but i could tell that they're soft enough to be able to manipulate, which is a good sign if you're trying to open up a lens and the tabs keep laying back down on you like like they were. Originally.

It's going to be really really hard to get that lens off and you don't want to overheat them. So it's kind of a fine balance between how many minutes this thing gets to sit in and heat up. Okay, now, when a light is broken on the back side, some of the structural integrity of the housing is not going to be there, and even so, i'm going to do my best to open this thing up without using any tools i'm going to use just my Hands here, there's normally stuff to grab onto, but right now, there's kind of not so bear with me just going to try to use whatever leverage i can get on the thing and that's good. Okay, now, second, most important part, if you are just replacing the lens, you don't want to get that glue all over everything inside because, especially if it's the chrome stuff, it's going to be really hard to get that that glue off without rubbing the chrome, silver aluminum.

Whatever surface whatever, whatever you want to call the shiny stuff in there, you don't want it to get all messed up, so this is where i do think that using a tool comes in really handy, even though i don't use one for prying whatsoever, most guys what You're gon na see them do is they're gon na take a big, dumb flat head, pry it in there and start pulling back and what that's gon na. Do it's gon na take this channel all right here that holds all the glue that keeps everything nice and sealed up on your plastic lens on your clear lens. It has a nice smooth surface in there, so when you shove in flathead and you pry away on it now, you've just made a lot of imperfections in that channel and that imperfection can lead to like an air pocket which is gon na. Let water seep in there later.

That's why a lot of people say never modify your lights. Bro they'll leak, it's like yeah, because somebody that didn't know what they were doing took them apart wrong way and then sealed them up the wrong way and we're not going to do that, even though these lights are broken, i'm still going to do this properly because I want to be a good example for what to do so, i'm going to take that flat, head screwdriver and instead of using it to pry, i'm going to use it just to get these little glue strands out of the way, i'm just making sure that i'm Swiping away so that i don't get glue on the inside just slowly lifting up with my other hand and eventually i'm going to get to the point where i can take this thing towards me and there's one more tab right there. I can use something stronger while still being careful not to pry too hard and break it, because this is going to come into play big time when you go to seal this thing later, all right so making sure i got no strands of glue anywhere. We're all set now this is what i'm replacing.

This is no good to me anymore. I don't need to do anything with that. Ooh, your boy didn't listen to his own advice and he messed up his gorilla grip. Gloves.

Sponsored me girl, grip that i appreciate it. Okay, so this i can replace easy because i could just throw it away, but because i didn't over here, look at that. Would you look at that? This thing is trash now now the the magic of this video is how to replace that. You do the same exact thing on the aftermarket set of depot lights, which i'm going to open up right now and you would take off that lens and put the brand speaking new one on to your factory housing that has all that expensive stuff in there.

So, let's get those things out, so this is a set of projector style lights from depot. Basically, look like a brand new set of those they just don't have the super expensive hid. Projectors inside this is not a high priced set of lights. I think this is like four or 500 bucks, something like that.

So if you take this lens and you stick it on your original xenon housings, it's gon na make them look brand brand new, but you didn't have to spend the two grand to get it. So that's literally the value of this video is the fact that you could buy depot aftermarket replacement lights. Make your factory ones look super new.