How to Replace Headlights 2006-08 Honda Pilot

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

Release the hood. Open your hood. Remove the 13 clips holding this radiator cover on. There's one here, here, here, all the way down, and this one's broken, and there's one there. So this one will be real easy. It's just going to pop right out—it's broken. The rest of them, I'm going to take a flat bladed screwdriver and gently pry up on it. After the last one is removed, can lift off this plastic cover from the radiator.

Remove these push clips here. There's one in each side. This one's a bit stuck in there. I'm going to need a trim clip tool, it's a nice U shape, so I can pry under it. I see it was rusty, that's why it was stuck in there. Release it. Get underneath it. Pry it up. Now our grille and the top of our bumper is loose. There is a Phillip's head screw on each side of the car at the corner of the bumper, right up in here. Remove that with a Phillip's head screwdriver. And you see it. Repeat this for the other side.

On each side of the bumper, there are two bolts: 10 millimeter—one here, and one here. You'll have to remove these to detach your bumper from the vehicle. On our car, this one has actually broken off from the plastic, and it's rusted. It's not going to come apart, but it seems like it's going to come with the bumper. So I'm going to leave it in there. And this one here, it's a steel bolt into a steel clip behind it that is also rusted together, and as I'm spinning it, it's just ripping the splash shield. So I'm going to leave it, and we're going to do something a little different.

When we go to take this bumper off, I'm actually going to un-clip these entire splash shields on both sides from the fender liners. Some people call them splash shields or fender liners. I'm going to un-clip them all because it's just push clips and then some screws at the mud guard, and we will pull the whole bumper off with these splash shields, and then deal with this nut with the bumper off the car that's seized together.

Unclip this push clip. That will loosen this front part of the splash shield. This plastic here is going to stay with the vehicle when we take the bumper off. There is a push clip that's supposed to be here. You'll have to remove that. It's missing on our vehicle. It looks just like these, the same ones we've been removing. So I'm going to remove this one. There's another one here. And now the front of our bumper is loose.

I will repeat what we did over here on the other side. So the same thing has happened here. This 10 millimeter bolt has seized to the nut that's behind it. I can't get it loose. It's just tearing the fender liner. Again, well this clip is missing here. So this part will actually come down because it is not connected to this 10 millimeter bolt that has also torn the plastic. So this fender liner is loose in the front. So the entire bumper is loose. It's really only held on by the splash shields that go up and over the wheels. I'm going to un-clip those next. I'm going to take the whole bumper with those.

We need to access these screws that are on the mud guard. There's three of them. One is behind the tire. I'm going to turn the wheel so that I can get to it. Move the three Phillip's head screws holding the mud guard on. There's actually a fourth screw up here. It's hard to see. Move the Phillip's head screw with the back of the mud guard. So remove the 11 push clips that are under here. Use my trim tool clip removal tool.

Now you can see the fender liner starting to come loose. All the road debris that gets stuck inside there, now's a good time if you want to take a vacuum and just clean it out of there. Now our fender liner is real loose. Let that sit on the tire for now. Repeat the same for the other side. There's a bracket that the bumper is clipped into under here. Reach your hand around, pull it out. Repeat for the other side. Remove the bumper from the vehicle now that it's loose.

The bumper clips in under the headlights. Flip these splash shields down. Pull the splash shield out of the way. Un-clip the bumper from under the headlamp. There it is. I'm going to reach in so I can support it and lift it off the bumper beam. And then, un-clip the fog light connector. I'm going to remove this harness off of this bracket with my clip prying tool. I can get it. It's got a couple push connectors, push tabs on the other side. Maybe I can push it out. This is all because this won't come apart here. But now that I can access that, I will with it once the bumper's off the car.

Repeat this for the other side. Un-clip the fog lamp harness. Pull the harness off the bracket. Have to lift up the bumper a little bit to release some pressure. Use your clip prying tool. With those final clips and harnesses disconnected, I can pick the bumper up and bring it over to our bench.

There's a ten millimeter bolt here, a 10 millimeter bolt here and a 10 millimeter bolt under here. Additionally, there's a plastic push clip at the rear of the headlight, and we'll start by spraying these with some rust penetrant before I try to remove them. I'll go up and underneath. Using a 10 millimeter socket and ratchet, I'll remove this 10 millimeter bolt bracket that comes down from the headlamp, has a little pin on it that's right here, and to remove it. You’re going to have just pull off that pin, remove the 10 millimeter bolts not top, go under here, and remove this 10 millimeter bolt. With the bolts loose and the plastic clip out, I'm going to lift the headlamp off the body.

There's two pins over here that are into the fender. So it's going to have to come start out. There's a harness that's connected to the bottom of the headlamp housing. I'm actually going to unclip this bulb connector that will have to be coming down anyways, so I'm just going to undo it now so I can get to the harness that's underneath. There's some tabs on either side, so I'm going to push them in with a flat headed screwdriver to try and lock it. With the bumper off, I can reach in here. So once it's unlocked, you just pull it out from the bottom. So lift the headlight out of the body. Make sure it's free down here. If it makes it easier, you can undo the connectors or actually take the bulbs out of the housing and turn them counterclockwise. Give me some more clearance. You need to unplug this. I'm going to put this back in here so that I don't lose it. I'm going to unclip them, push it into the tabs. Remove the whole headlamp.

Here's our old headlamp from my vehicle. It's yellowed from the sun and it's pitted and real gross looking. This is our new one from 1AAuto.com It's going to put out better light, help you see better at night. Flip these over, get a better look at them. It's got the same mounting tabs on both headlamps. The new one does not have bulbs or sockets. I am going to transfer those from the original. It does come with, these two plastic covers around here, and there may be a couple more plastic covers over these holes. They came off in the bag, but that's okay. So before you install it, you're going to remove these. Don't worry about that. I'm going to transfer over these bulbs from the old one to the new one. It's on a little clip and there's a small tab in here. I'm just going to pull up with my finger, it's a small tab in here. So it would lock on like that, pull it off, take it to our new one.

Take our old connector, set it under our headlamp housing. We remove the low beam headlight, turn it counterclockwise, unlock it, pull it out, put the side on the table, and try not to touch the bulb with your fingers. It will lessen the light for the bulb. You need to pry this rubber out and install it to our new headlamp. Take our headlamp bulb. It's got tabs that match these openings. That's a wider tab there. It's going to go in the wide opening here. It's going to get turned clockwise to lock it in. So just like that. And you can plug it in right now if you like.

Swap the high beam bulb, turn it counterclockwise, unlock it, pull it out, place it inside, peel the rubber out. Place the rubber into here. Take our bulb, line up the tabs, push it in, turn clockwise, that will lock it in. Turn signal bulb. Going to wipe some of the oil that got on the seal. Line it up with the tabs, and turn it clockwise to lock it. Start with the sort of marker light bulb. Side marker light. And you swapped all the bulbs in your new headlamp assembly. If you need to align the headlights, the adjustment screw is here on the back of the headlight.

To help with installation, I'm going to loosen this Phillip's head screw. I won't take it out all the way but it will just give me some more room to play with here. Before I install the new headlamp, I'm just going to move our headlamp harness out of the way, take our new headlamp, and slide this mounting tab and these two down here between the body and this bracket. Again, if it makes it easier, you can remove this top bulb and socket. Get that up here, out of the way. I like to pull this out a bit. Just have to maybe just move that tab down just to flex it a little bit.

Then you want to get these two locating tabs into the fender. And then underneath, I'm going to move this metal back up to let these locating tabs here. Tighten this Phillips head. I'll start this bolt by hand. I'm not going to fully tighten it so I can make any adjustments to the equipment of the headlamp, put this lower one in, it goes in from underneath. Replace our push clip and install the bolt that goes down here. Start by tightening this bolt. There shouldn't be too much adjustment because you should have it locked in these pins and the little locating rubber tab here. That looks pretty good, so I'm going to finish tightening this bolt up top. I will tighten this lower 10 millimeter bolt. I'm going to finish tightening this 10 millimeter bolt on the side just until it feels tight, I'm going to stop.

We took our turn signal socket out to make fitting the headlight easier so now it's time to fit it back in. You can turn it here clockwise to lock it in. I'm going to plug in this gray connector that was underneath, underneath here, the low beam bulb, and move over and plug in our microwave bulb. It's connected there. While I'm in here, I will also connect this one up here. So the final one is the high beam bulb and then this harness can be pushed into the tab on the bottom of the headlight. Repeat the same for the other side.

So before we reinstall the bumper, just make sure you test the lights and that they all work because now would be the time that you can remove the headlamp and change any bulbs very easily. Make sure that connectors are plugged into the back of the sockets, other than that, these look good and they should give us great vision going down the road. Here's our low beam lights, flood lights, high beams. We have our new headlights, fog lights, high beams.

You may need an assistant to help you with this bumper cover. It's a little unwieldy, especially since we have the fender liners still attached. So what we're going to do before we get the bumper totally seated on there, bring it in, we're going to reach up and connect the fog lights back on. Pushing this harness back into the fog light bracket, connecting the fog light electrical socket back on to the light. Lifting the bumper up, placing it on the crash beam. There are these brackets here. The bumper is going to have to fit up into those. And we're good over there.

So I'm going to take this one, get up into position. Repeat this for the other side. We're pushing the bumper into the bracket that is under the headlamp. And then the fender bracket. To hold the top of the bumper, push these clips in first. You might have to move the bumper. Holes are slotted, just flex the bumper so the fit. Take the center section out, sometimes it's easier to get it started. The same for this side.

I'm going to lift this splash shield back up. It's going to go under the bumper. Lined up. Place this clip here. Our splash shield is broken here. The bolt is supposed to go through it, but since it's ripped, I'm just going to place it back up where it was. Replace the clip that was in here. It's easier to remove the center part. Squeeze these tabs together.

Time to reinstall the splash shield, or fender liner. Just going to place it back in just like that. Doesn't really matter where you start with these clips. This one's a pretty good spot. And just going to go around, find all the open holes. Place the clips that we took out. Don't forget this one clip way under here. This one caught us up when we were removing the bumper.

Reinstall the mud guard. Get this screw caught here first. One final screw in the back. Replace the screw that goes up into the fender bracket that holds the bumper on. They'll repeat this procedure for the other side.

Reinstall the radiator cover. Going to lift up the hood release, feed it through, sit over these little rubber bumpers. Replace the 13 push clips on the top of the radiator cover. With those installed, you can close the hood. Job is complete.

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