If there’s one thing I hate about it is removing a car’s bumper cover. There are too many tabs to break, too many clips to snap on and – if you’re like me – too many screws to forget to put in a magnetic holder and lose while looking for your 10mm socket. Replacing the headlight unit on some cars also requires the removal of a bumper cover, although many more happy people can get away with just a few bolts on the top of the mounting. But then there’s Porsche, which has mastered the art of removing headlights with ease and precision.
As it turns out, removing the headlight on pretty much any Porsche after 996 may be the easiest removal on pretty much any car I’ve ever seen. Simply insert a tool packaged with the car’s factory-supplied emergency tool kit into a small passage, turn it, and pull it all out.
The magic here works by using something Porsche calls the “clamping bracket” – a small piece of metal used to hold the headlight on the mounting bracket nestled in the car’s fender. At the end of the bow, facing the inside of the front trunk, is a male hexagon that perfectly matches the OEM headlight removal tool that comes conveniently with the car’s emergency tools.
Whenever a headlight goes out, or if the whole thing itself needs to be removed for some reason, just lift the carpet in the frunk next to the headlight and place the tool. A quick half turn rotates the clamp and begins to push the headlight out of its nest.
Or, if you prefer non-proprietary hand tools, a Porsche technician and I talked about this setup and said you could use a 5mm hex socket on an extension to remove it easily – but he also warned me not to make sure I taped it First off unless I wanted to sacrifice my outlet to the Porsche gods.