RE: mounting headlight covers

["Rich Hirsch" <rhirsch@domain.elided>]

Joe Martin Cantrell wrote:

> My Spider keeps breaking the plastic rear mounting tabs on its Carello
headlight covers.

> Does anyone have any good ideas for an improved mounting system?

IMO I've done two things to improve mounting the headlight covers.

1) Put short pieces of vinyl tubing around the mounting tabs of the light
covers.
This helps keep the cover's tabs from rattling in their mounting holes and
cushions
the tabs. In at least one case I couldn't find tubing thin enough to cover
the tab
and fit in the mounting hole. In this case I used heat shrink tubing to
cover the
tab. (I don't think I actually shrunk the tubing, but if tubing size needs
to be reduced,
shrink the tubing OFF the tab.)

2) I use a small screw at the front of the cover (thru the slot in the
cover) to hold the cover in
place, rather than the factory method of offset-arm-with-screw. The screw
goes into a
rivet nut mounted at the front of the headlight bucket. I think this
provides a more secure
fastening method than factory. I use a Torx screw (a hex head screw should
also work). A normal '-' or '+' screw should also work, but since the screw
has to be
screwed in at an angle, a Torx or hex driver works better.

I don't normally leave the covers on the car. They go on the car for special
events only.
Normally the covers are stored in a black bag in the garage. The first pair
of covers I
owned were left on the car and they yellowed and became cloudy over time. I
was able
to restore clarity with Maguire's swirl remover, but the yellowness
remained.

Rich Hirsch
St Louis MO
'67 Duetto
'78 Spider
'87 Milano
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