How to Replace Headlights 2010-17 Chevy Equinox

Hey friends, it's Len here at 1A Auto. Today, we're working on a 2015 Chevy Equinox. We're going to be replacing the headlamp assemblies. Going to be a fairly easy job. I want to be the guy that shows you how to do it. If you need these or any other part, you could always check us out at 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

Okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to try to get this little plastic plate off of here. There are some push clips. I'm going to go ahead and remove these. The center of these pulls up from the outer part of it. I'll show you what it looks like here. That's what they look like. When you have the center pushed in, it forces those two sides out, which holds it in the hole. That's why you lift up the center part, it relieves pressure and this thing can squish and slides right out of the hole. We're going to do the same thing for all of these. Just a little spot you can try to get your tool into. Using my little forky tool. You can use whatever you've got. Pocket screwdriver usually works pretty well. Set these aside. Sometimes they come apart, that's okay. We'll just shove it back together. Easy peasy.

Okay, so we've got those four out. Let's see if I can grab this plastic. Wiggle it around, see what's holding it in. Now that we've got this side off, we're going to do the same to the other side of the vehicle, and then we'll go ahead and start removing the rest of the bumper cover. Here we go. That one out of the way.

Now we're going to remove these. These are Torx bits. Little T20s. Okay, like little stars. This is what the tool looks like. Put it in here, turn it to the left. Zip them all out. I'm going to leave one in. I'm just going to have it loose though. That's just going to make it so the bumper cover stays on while we continue down at the bottom there, then it'll hold it up for us. That's what those look like. They're all the same. We've got the one that's still there of course. This can move around a little bit. Perfect. Let's move along.

We're going to do some push clips here. We got a push clip right there, okay? There's going to be another one right in front of this tire, right there. Here, and here. After we remove those, there's a T20 and a T20 there, same tool that we used up top, we're going to use down bottom. I got my little forky tool. I got a little pocket screwdriver, just going to see about trying to pull out the centers of these push clips. I showed you how they worked already. Show you again just in case. When it was closed it was like that, these go in between, pull out the center, and then it unlocks the little edges there. Here we go, we got that one, move down the line, grab this guy. All right. This one's going to be a little harder to get to because of the tire, but I'm sure it can be done. Okay, got our push clips. I'll set it aside.

Got our T20 here, here. They both look the same. Easy peasy, can't mix them up. That feels pretty great. Take a peek under here. We've got that bolt right there. I'm going to grab the size for that real quick. I'll let you know what it is. Once we get that out, we're going to do the same exact thing for the other side of the vehicle, and then we'll lift it up more and we'll grab everything from underneath.

All right, so we got our seven millimeter. Going to blast this out of here. There it is, set that aside. Okay, we can give that a little tug. Perfect, so now like I said, we're going to do the same exact thing on the other side of the vehicle, we'll raise it up, we'll continue on releasing the rest of this bumper cover, disconnect the fog lights of course, and then we should be clear to bring it back down and pop it all right off.

Under here, we've got our fog light assemblies. You can see it from the back side. We've got some wiring that goes to the bulb. We're just going to turn the bulb to the left counter-clockwise until it stops, and then we're going to carefully pull it out, see? We'll give it a quick inspection. We've got our rubber seal there, slide it back over, it's easy enough. Should be easy enough without the flashlight in my hand. There it is, cool. All right, so something to note, you want to be very careful not to touch on that glass, especially if you've got oily hands or anything like that, even gloves isn't really the best to touch the glass, so if you can avoid it, that's always great.

Take a look, see if it looks like it's black in any way or discolored or swollen or the filament inside looks like it's got any crusty buildups on it. If that was the case, you'd want to replace it and right on the back of the bulb, you could see what the bulb number is, it's an H11 on this particular vehicle, so I'm sure it is on yours as well if you're working on the same thing. I'm just going to leave this down to dangle. That's a funny word but anyway, we're going to leave it so it can hang like that and I'm going to do the same to the other side and then we'll just go ahead and we'll remove a couple more bolts here, get the lower part of this thing moving, and then we'll go ahead back up top, we'll take off the last bolt and we should be able to slide this right off.

Here we go. This part right here is part of the inner wheel well that we were taking apart up there, so we want to remove these two bolts. We're going to continue with our seven millimeter. Turn these to the left obviously. Come right along. This little electric tool is amazing. Slides out, clear to come off. Feel a little triangle here, okay? When you pull it off, you can see. That just means when you're putting it back together, that triangle's going to go back under there, okay? Just holds it, and you can put your bolts back in. Easy peasy. Okay, cool, so this is wobbling around pretty easily now. I would say we're clear to bring it back down and we'll start pulling it off.

Here we go, time for our last bolt up top here. We're going to pull that bumper cover, make sure it doesn't want to come loose too much on us until we can figure out exactly what's going on. Now don't forget, we have our fog lamp bulbs just hanging under there, okay, so the less that we jiggle this around, probably the better overall. Let's see if I can get this off. There we are. Now we've removed our front bumper cover.

Okay, so the headlamp assembly is held in by a few bolts. There's a 10 millimeter head down inside this hole right here. You're going to need something with a long extension I'm sure to get down in there. Then you have a seven, a seven, and then there's another bolt hidden right behind this fender that we're going to get to in a minute, but first we'll take off the top three, and then we'll go ahead and we'll try to find the one under there. I'll show you what it looks like. We'll get it out and we'll keep on rolling from there, okay?

Here we go, 10. I'm going to turn it to the left. I'm going to get down in there. There's our 10, okay? Easy peasy. We'll set this aside. We'll go ahead and remove the others. We've got the seven, seven, and then like I said, we've got another bolt hidden behind the fender here that I'll show you how to get to in a minute.

Since we removed all the top bolts already, we were down to just having one left, it's in the third hole down. Just a seven millimeter, same tool we've been using. Turn to the left. There it is. About the same as all the rest of them. Put it up where we can find it. I'm going to take our unit, just going to lift it up, got a little bit of wiring back here. Let's see if I can turn it so we can all see it. There it is. Going to use our pocket screwdriver again, I love this tool. This gray thing right here is just a lock. You want to try to push it in and up. That's all it is. That just prevents this from being able to get pushed like that and pulled out. Now that we have it off, just take a peek inside here. This is the wiring harness of course. You see any funny colors, rainbow colors, rust, debris, water, anything, you want to make sure it's cleaned up or replaced. There we are. Easy peasy.

Here we go, friends, a quick product comparison for you. Today, we're working on out 2015 Chevy Equinox. We just removed this headlamp assembly, did the same thing to the other side, but I just want to show you a comparison between headlamps. Here's our original one. You can judge by just the shape. Looks like it's the exact same shape. It's got the molding right here. This is going to help hold it to the bumper cover. Right here, that's where we got the mounting bolt. We've got the molding there, holds the bumper cover. We've got that right there, mount. Give it a little flip. Try not to roll it onto the new glass there or plastic. Up along the top you can see all the mounting holes. They all match up, okay? I'd point them out to you but I don't want to drop the new one.

Pull this around. I'll show you the back side. Comes with all the wiring. Comes with the covers for the bulbs. This is the new one. Comes with new bulbs. It's always good habit to keep your old ones just in case. Just going to put this back on hopefully. There it is, locks in. This one's the same thing. Pops right off. Got your bulb assembly there. Everything's in there nice and beautiful. Oh, watertight seals of course. Always important. There you are. Got our new assembly, our old assembly. Exact same match. Looks the exact same. I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be a great quality part to install on the vehicle, so I'm going to go ahead and do it. If you need these or any other parts, you can always click onto 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

Here we go. I just wanted to show you on the top ear up here where it slides in up here, it's just got a little, like a little prong, okay? Sticks down, goes in that hole, just kind of keeps it anchored. When you're putting this in, you want to obviously be careful not mess up the paint on your fender, right? Well, I guess while it's out I'll show you this actually, sorry. While it was in I could probably do it on my own but to show you, I've got my little clip here, goes right there. I'm just going to slide it in. Here we are. Just make sure it's down in. Okay, grab our lock. This just slides right ... Here we are, we're locked in. We give the connector a little tug. It doesn't slide out. If it slides out, obviously it's not locked in right. Make sure you get it right, okay?

Like I said before, being very careful for the paint on our fenders, I mean it's your paint job, you can do what you want but I'm going to be careful. I'm just going to try to bring this up, get it into our little hole that I showed you. There it is. Everything's sitting down nice and flush. We've got our hole lined up here. Hole lined up there. Looking down in there it's lined up. Let's look along the bottom, make sure we don't have any wires or anything hanging, getting caught. This is still good. That's our little fog lamp, right? That looks like it's lined up. Now we'll go ahead and we'll put in our bolts and we'll move along. Got this one to start. It's already in my hand so I might as well just put it in. Seven millimeter, nice and snug. Here we are. Now we'll go ahead and do the top ones. Get that one in down there. We'll do the same to the other headlamp assembly and we'll get the cover back on.

Here we go, we've got our bolts for up top. Got our two smalls, right? We used a seven millimeter to take those out. Boom, boom, okay, and we have this big one round here, that's the 10. It goes down there, okay? Easy peasy. We could start in the ones that we can reach, why not? Get this one in here. Just like that. Then all the way down in there is the 10. That one's going to be the fun one to try to get in so I don't know, I'm just going to wing it. You know, there might be a couple outtakes and bloopers you could probably check on the internet for those. Len goes wild, I don't know. I guess try and get these things in. Going to be interesting.

Now I got it at least on the hole. Get my magnet out of there. Okay, I got it on the hole. Go ahead and get it in, there it is. Just going to tighten it right down using my 10 millimeter. I don't want to say anything to jinx myself because I still have to do the other side, but you know, first try. Woo woo. Okay, just check it, make sure it's all lined up along the fender. This looks pretty great. We've got our one, two, three, four mounting bolts. They're all nice and tight. We'll do the same thing to the other side headlamp, and then we'll move along.

Here we go, we've got our bumper cover. We're going to lift it up on here. We're going to be careful of these edges to make sure that they don't go hitting up against the fender. This one's a little damaged but that wasn't me by the way. Just playing, it really wasn't though. I'm just going to keep those edges low and I'm just going to scoop the top in up here, just get it kind of settled in. I'm going to start a couple of these bolts just to hold it for me, and then I'm going to work my way along the edges there. Get everything settled in along the top, and then I'll go down to the bottom and do the same thing. What size is this? Twenty. Torx bit 20. We'll keep it loose just in case we have to move some stuff around, right? Just want to make sure that it can't fall down, hit the floor. Like I said, I'm keeping all these loose, I'm just starting them in so I can move everything around as I need to, okay? Nice and loose.

Okay, let's come along here. Right up along the headlamp, we have the little scoops, right? You come over here, you got a little clip, clip, clip, clip, clip, okay, so that's where your bumper's going to want to ride in, so you're going to need to bring it up, bring it right up along your headlamp. The bumper cover itself has all these little slots in it, that's where those clips are going to want to ride. You're probably going to need to give it a little tug just to get it into where it needs to go. All right, looking good. I'm going to do the same thing to the other side.

All right, so we've got the bumper all lined up. It looks great. Couldn't ask for better really. I'm just going to take my Torx bit 20, snug these puppies up. Very nice. All right, now let's lift it up to a working height so we can get to those wheel wells. We'll get all those put together, then we'll bring it all the way up, we'll plug in our fog lights and finish up along the bottom.

All right, so we remember that we had the one seven millimeter head bolt, goes right up through here, right? Goes through the bottom of the bumper cover up into the fender. Just use my little tool, you can use a ratchet, whatever you've got. We're just going to find the hole here. There it is. Nice and snug. We'll grab this, slide it back into position here. Okay, so now when we look at it, you can see behind there, there's a metal piece, that's where there's a screw. This one's just a big gaping hole, that's a plug, screw, hole, hole, hole. Let's see what we got for parts.

We got two screws, perfect. I remember saying we needed two screws. We got four little push clips. We didn't lose anything. We're doing all right. Here we are. Let's do the push clips first because they'll kind of keep everything kind of generally speaking where it should be, right? Then we can worry about putting in all those screws after. Here we go. Two screws. I'm just going to grab my little Torx bit, I got it right here. Sticking with my 20. Turn the wheel, or not. See if I can get this in. I'm going to grab a ratchet, I'll finish that one off in one second. Here we are. Okay, grab my ratchet. Feels great. Okay, all those are still in. Perfect, we'll do the same to the other wheel well and then we'll bring it up and continue.

Now we're gong to put in our fog lamps. Once again, we're going to be very careful not to touch that glass, okay? We'll just check them one more time to make sure the filament's not broken. We did a lot of moving around. I'm just going to take it clean up in here, I'm going to start by going all the way as far counter-clockwise as I can and then I'm going to turn it to the right so it locks in. Should be straight up and down in the locked in position. I'll come over, we'll do the same thing over here. Check it. Looks pretty great. Filament's not broken, nothing moving around. I didn't touch the glass. I'm going to bring it over, I'm going to turn it all the way counter-clockwise as far as I can until it grabs, then I'm going to bring it back to the right. Once it sets in, we'll bring it down. It's locked. It's in the straight up and down position. All ears are in. Cool.

Now we're going to grab this. We got our little triangle ear here. It's going to slide over that just like this. Sets in. We're going to do the same thing to the other side. We've got two bolts. Easy peasy. All right, so I've got my bolts. I'm just going to take them and I'm just going to put them in. All right, this one. Right here. This one. Very nice. Everything feels great. We'll bring it back down, we'll finish up with the top and we should be all done.

Okay, so now it's time to put these up along the top. Got our little clips here. Like I said, if you looked at this and you didn't see the metal clip, it's probably inside these holes right here. If that was the case, you'd want to just take them out, okay? You can use something like a pocket screwdriver or whatever you have to do. Get them out of there, put them back on this. You can't just go ahead and put this plastic into those metal clips if they're down there. They just don't like to work that way.

We're going to line up these with these holes. Being careful not to scratch any of our paint just like always, we're trying real hard to do a good job here. That slides under there. This up here. Got our holes lined up. Just give it a little bonk, bonk, bonk. That slid in there. Okay, we've got four push clips. One here, one there, here, and there. You can do them in any order. You do you boo-boo. Slide them in. Then push in the center. Slide it in, push in the center. Onto the last, slide it in, push in the center. This under here should go right in there. Very nice. Okay, let me get this puppy lined up. There's just a little hole in it right there, that slides over this, okay? It's just kind of like a rain drip guard type of deal. There we are. Looks pretty great. We'll do the same to the other side, and then we're all set.

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 bulb. 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 backside 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 heights 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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