How to Replace Headlights 2006-08 Honda Civic

Hi, I’m Mike from 1A Auto. We’ve been selling auto parts for over 30 years!

To remove the front bumper, you can do this on the ground. We just have it up in the air so you can see what we're doing. But you need to come under here and pop out all of these clips. These are holding on the front bumper. There's a couple back here, over here. Just got to look for all these clips. Some of yours might be missing or broken. But you just want to take those out first before you go up top to start to remove the bumper.

We use a clip removal tool. That's actually supposed to go under the clip. Pry it down, and pull that clip out. Go on and do the same for all of them. Sometimes they get stuck with dirt. Might need a smaller, thinner screwdriver. They get stuck, and get bound up with dirt. Pop them out. I'm going to go along and do this for the whole bumper. Pull the last one out of here, and your bumper is loose at the bottom. Go up top, and finish removing it.

There's a Phillips head screw inside this opening here in the splash shield. Got to remove that. Going to repeat this for the other side. We're going to remove this plastic air guide in the engine compartment. It's got some push clips. Use a small flat-bladed screwdriver to work those up. Going to use my trim tool. Pop them out. Do the same with the other one. This is actually clipped underneath this little piece of trim here. You can pull up, just pop it out, and do the same on this side. Just pull it up. Pop that pin out. Push it this way a little bit. Lift that up. It's got a lip that's pushed into the grill, so just pull out.

Going to pull this trim out. I need to pull that clip out. Just going to pop this one up, just so I can move this trim a little better. Just need to slide it over like that. Then we're going to pull this out from behind the grill. Going to slide it up and off of the hood latch. Flex it off. Spray a little rust penetrant on these. These are T-35 Torx. Break them free. We'll do this for the one on the other side. With all the bolts and clips removed from the bumper, you should be able to pull it out of the clips that it snaps into. It snaps into, just like that, into these brackets. You're going to pull it out. It's going to sound like it's breaking, but it's really just breaking free of the clips. I'm just going to pop it just like that. Do the same for the other side. Reach your hand in here. Just give it a swift tug. Pop it right off. Then we can put this aside.

Before you can remove the headlight, we're going to take out the bracket. The headlight is bolted through the same part as the bracket that holds on the bumper. I'm going to undo this bolt and then come over. There's another bolt way, way in there. Got to undo that. Just take this bracket out of the way and make it easier to get the headlight out. Let's spray some rust penetrant on this bolt. It's ten millimeters, with my socket wrench to remove it. Put that aside. Just using a long extension on my ten millimeter socket to remove this bolt.

There's a hidden bolt underneath the headlamp holding it on. It's ten millimeter. Reach up with the extension. You could either remove this on the car or you could remove the whole headlamp with the bracket attached. Since I've unbolted it from the body and then removed the bracket off the car, but we're going to remove this right now. Slide it out of the way. There's two more bolts, one here and here.

Spray some rust penetrant in them. Sometimes that happens. They break free. I was trying to loosen it up a little bit, spray some rust penetrant in there, tighten it, loosen it, go back and forth, but unfortunately that one broke. I'll have to get a new bolt. It broke in the side of the headlight which is fine because we're replacing that. Try to remove this one. This one's going a lot easier. I'm just going to hold onto the headlight. It's starting to come loose.

Slide the headlight out of the fender and just kind of work it down, get it off that little rubber grommet that sits into the fender. Slide it right out. That's why it's easier to pull the bracket out because it needs to slide down. We have the wiring harness with all the lights on it. So you can actually flip it over here, actually push the lock in and remove this. Same thing for this one. Same thing for this light. These get filled with dirt, get hard to remove. Undo this clip. We can take some small needle nose pliers and just push it in and work it out of the hole. Leave that harness with the car and take the headlight out.

Here's our original headlight from our vehicle. It's all yellowed and cracked and worn. Here's our brand new one from 1aauto.com. It comes, it ships with this protective plastic on it. You can just peel it right off. See how nice and clear that is. It is an exact match for the original. Same style mounts. Comes with new threaded inserts. We'll replace that bolt that I broke. It has the same spots for the brackets. It has your up and down, left and right adjustments. Pull these plastics off, prevent anything from getting in the headlight while it ships. You can replace the, you can swap over our bulbs and sockets.

Start with the high beam bulb over here. Just kind of turn it counterclockwise. Pull it out. Install the bulb. Line up the slots. Turn it clockwise to lock it in place. Repeat this for the other bulbs. 9006. Take this whole bulb and socket assembly out. It's a turn signal marker bulb. This headlight's ready to be installed in the car. Just going to take some electrical contact cleaner because these are a little dirty when I took them off and just spray in here. Get some of the dirt out of them. Hook up the connectors back up. They'll make a nice click when they're seated.

Put our harness back into the headlight. This can actually go just like that. Slide out headlight back into the body and up in the fender. That rubber grommet is going to go up into just behind the fender here. I think it goes up in there. There's also grommet here. Sorry, there's a little pin here that needs to match up into the fender here. Just pull up in and line up, this has got a little pin. It's got to sit up in there, so I've got a replacement bolt. I'll get it captured. I'm going to slide this bracket back into place. Work it under, it's got to go over this. It's got some locating tabs on it. Get it into place over here. Get this bolt caught. Take a long extension and a ten millimeter socket and our bolt and get this bracket into place. So this headlight has a little locating tab and the bolt hole. Trying to get this lined up. Put out bolt into place. Our final bolt caught on top here. Just going to make it tight. I'll stop, finishing tightening up this one, and finishing tightening up the one on the outside. The headlight is replaced. Just repeat these steps for the other side.

Going to reinstall our bumper. Going to push it straight in and line it up with the brackets. Slide it up into place. Feed the fender liner underneath it. Then pull it up and push it out of the bracket. Push it onto the bracket under the headlight. Go to the other side. Do the same. Going to line up the other side. This under liner is caught. Push it in there. Just pull that all into place. Push the under liner to the inside of the bumper here. It's OK if that pops back out. Just pop that back in. When the bumper's clicked into place, you can reinstall the screws and all the clips.

Reinstall the self-tapping screws. Hold the end of the bumper on. Just repeat that for the other side. Reinstall these screws. Going to reinstall this air guide. It's flexible, so just going to slide it up and over. You got to fit it over these little rubber bump stops. These tabs actually go underneath the fender. Then this lip goes behind the grill. Flex it into place, just like that. Bring this up and slide this over. Fold this up. It goes like that. Do the same for the other side. Flip this in. Push it in. Flip this over. Put this under the plastic trim. Reinstall the clip that was here. Going to reinstall this clip on this side and repeat that for the other side. Reinstall these push clips, and do the same for both sides. Replace all the push clips. Just go along the bumper and reinstall all your push clips.

On the driver's side and the passenger side, the headlight adjustments, there is one here and then one, it's harder to see, it's on the outside here. The driver side's a little trickier to get to because of the battery and the coolant overflow bottle. You can actually pull this straight up. It slides off the bracket. Just got a little stop to it but pull it straight up. It'll slide right off.

The adjustment's down there and then the outside one is more towards the outside. To get to the back of this headlight, I'm going to remove the clips that are on the bottom of the splash shield. It will allow me to peel the splash shield back and I can reach my hand in there and get to the back of the headlight. Just going to use a trim clip tool or a small flat bladed screwdriver, pry those clips out. There's one there and one here and another one right here. Push this out. Pull it down. We'll pull the bumper out a little bit. Pop it out. Splash shields are pretty soft. You can mess with them a bit. I'm also going to remove this clip up here. It'll give me a little more room to move. Push this down. So the other adjustment on the headlight is out here. It's in between the outer turn signal marker light and the low beam bulb on the housing.

It's kind of hard to see, but it's a silver nut that's right in there. That's what you can turn for your adjustment. So I'm just going to feed this back in to where it was. You can bend and push these splash shields around usually a little bit. They get lined up. Pull the bumper out just a little bit. Push the splash shield in. Just going to get past the edge. Reinstall your push clips. Go underneath here. Get this one lined up. Put this one in. And this last one is up behind here.

This is a basic tutorial on how to aim the headlights on your vehicle. Find the axis of your headlights. This is usually indicated with a small dot or the headlight bulb size on the lens. If not, it's the actual center point of your headlight ball. Transfer this mark to a vertical wall with a preferably dark color that'll allow you to back up 25 feet.

Pull up and find the center line of your vehicle as well as the center line of your headlight axis. Mark the wall with the height of the headlights and a straight line going across at that axis height. Back your vehicle up 25 feet from the wall to the front edge of your vehicle's headlights.

Turn your headlights on and locate the adjusting screw usually on the back side of your headlights. You'll want to rotate this until the passenger hotspot or focus of the beam is approximately two inches below the line and the driver's side is four inches below the line. We change the height on each side so you can still get a good beam to the off side of the road on the passenger side and have the driver's side low enough to not blind oncoming traffic.

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