HEADLIGHTS

Having been in the 'Japanse car tuning game' for some time and being quite knowledgeable on all things relating to 'Jap' and 'sportscar' it came as no shock when Bill at Parallel informed me that they had used Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo headlights on their latest demonstrator. I had seen the later genuine Diablo GT/6.0 pictures before Parallel had built their car, and was sure that if not the same, they were incredibly similar to the 300ZX. To this day, I have not got close enough to a genuine Diablo to confirm if they are indeed the same unit as fitted to the 300 but I'd wager that they are. I would like to hope that Lamborghini removed the small 'NISSAN' logo that is cast into the headlight glass during manufacture in the vain hope of preventing 'sacrilege' and 'how could you do it?' jibes from the purists. Myself, I find it quite amusing that a 150K car should use lights off a considerably cheaper Japanese car but there you go. We all know that Lambo use Fiat switchgear so I guess it's no surprise. *UPDATE* It's obvious how Lambo got around the 'Nissan' logo problem- note the black band at the top of the headlight that covers everything up.....

I often looked at the various internet chat sites devoted to Jap sportscars in the course of my job and found a guy breaking a 300ZX on www.300zx.co.uk. He had a pair of lights, in very good condition at £160. I checked out the price and found that most breakers wanted around £200 a pair so thought I'd go ahead and get them (brand new ones are £235.00 each). Upon reciept I found that as well as needing two new low beam bulbs I thought that the inside of the glass could do with a clean and decided to split the glass from the assembly. Do NOT attempt this by prising with a large screwdriver. You will either break the glass or fracture the plastic. The following procedure is suggested as a guide only, taken from my own experience, and I cannot be held responsible for any damage to your lights or indeed any burns you suffer while doing this operation.

Firstly, pre heat your oven (yes, kitchen oven) to 150 deg C. While it's warming up remove all the bulbs, wiring, any rubber (including the two small 180 degree breathers on the back of the unit) and get a pair of thick garden gloves and a large flat bladed screwdriver ready. When the oven is at the right temperature, put the headlight inside (obviously it needs to fit so check this first) for 3.5 minutes. Remove the headlight (with gloves on) and you will find that the grey mastic type glass sealant has virtually melted. Gently prise the glass from the assembly with the screwdriver and in most cases it will gently open enough to enable you to get a couple of fingers in there and you can then lift off the whole glass. If the sealant is still too strong then pop the light back in for another minute. Do not force it. **If you really don't want to risk damaging your headlights this procedure can be done using a good hairdryer, but it will take longer and you will need to remove the glass in 'stages' as you will not be able to heat the headlight uniformly**

Once the glass off, clean the glass as necessary then replacement is the reverse of the above. You may find (like I did) that some of the gaps around the glass were now a bit more open than before so just seal any areas around the edge with silicone sealant. Replace all bulbs, rubbers, wiring etc. Well done! Now do the other one........

FITTING THE LIGHTS

Fortunately your second hand lights should come with some nice original mounting brackets fitted to them. These are pretty close to the surrounding front boot/wheelarch liner on the Torero and make it fairly easy to mount them to their new home. I just got some perforated strip from B&Q and bent them up as necessary. After bonding and riveting the brackets to the liner and opening up the holes that were in the body I could mount the lights.

This is the one area that needs a fair bit of work to look right. Parallel supply the body with cut-outs for the pop-up headlights (and the headlight pods) but bearing in mind that the pop-up mechanism is a nightmare to construct I decided, as apparantly most other Torero builders, to use the fixed 300ZX units as mentioned above. This brings with it a substantial problem in terms of headlight alignment. The Diablo that used the fixed headlights had a redesigned headlight area to allow the bottom of the headlight to sit level. This meant building a recess around them. If you try and fit the 300 units to a bodyshell without the recesses you end up with copious quantities of silicone sealant everywhere (to have some attempt at closing the big gaps), and a headlight that is way out in terms of beam alignment and quite effectively ruins what would otherwise be a very nice replica. This is best understood by looking at the pictures below.

Parallels demonstrator above left, genuine Diablo above right

Above: with the headlights sitting as they should, you can see the amount of work required

So, deciding that this sort of work is certainly beyond my capabilities I found an experienced bodyshop who could carry out the work. First thing to do was get the lights in the right posistion to start with. The pictures below show this, and the method of mounting. The lights actually have 4 mounting points but there really is no need to use the mount closest to the wheelarch as it's a snug fit, and if use use wide gauge strip like I did it's plenty strong enough.

MORE PICTURES OF THE HEADLIGHT RECESS FINALLY FINISHED CAN BE SEEN ON THE EXTERIOR>BODY PAGE.

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