Dear fellow piss-ants - large, small, wanna-be, and closet piss-ants.

A week ago I had my H4s off when rewiring for hot bulbs. I faced the same thing. This is how I solved it.

1. Make sure the rubber gasket is properly seated.
2. Start the lower retaining screw, but leave lots of thread showing.
3. Ensure the lip of the headlight piece is secure behind the lip on the top of the bucket.
4. Now comes the highly technical part. Sit on the headlight (straddle it) so it stays firmly in place and let the screwing begin.
5. Dismount and test your work by grabbing and shaking the H4.
6. Pop open a bear and congratulate yourself for using your asset in a way Ferry never intended.

Piss-ants rule! Cabs drool - or is that targas, or coupes, or....

Let's make a NWPAO badge (New World Piss Ant Order) and be done with it.. next up, what oil, Dino or Synthetic.

RSBob:

#4 is a good solution. I simply bent (carefully) the trim ring for the H4 to a wider 'oval' shape, pulling the top and bottom closer together. That allowed the upper lip to retain a hold on the ledge of the headlight bucket. This is not the most securely attached part on your Porsche, but distorting the trim ring a bit has kept my headlights in place for years.

Why not solute the real problem?

Similarly experienced the frustration with the H4.
My case, I sorta got a way through by tweaking the ring a little bit where the ring tends to deform not fitting to the curve of the headlight bucket rim. Playing around with the tweak made it much easier for the ring to get in as well as to stay... good luck.

Oh stop, i'm only having fun at this point. This problem has been solved, at least until some detailed photos show up that point to an obscure problem. And I never heard the word solute used before in place of solve, but it's kinda neat!
:D

Post a pic RSC, it will tell us more of your issue. There should be enough lip on the rim of the lens cover to just fit over the tub rim indent/notch on top then it should slightly snap in. The screw is used to keep it snug. Do not over tighten it will strip.

While I was driving around then my driverside popped off then I realized it was never "snapped" in. Not like a real snap but more like a pushed in then a bit of tension like a plastic lid on a can. I hope that makes sense?. I also have the color match rim cover over my chrome rim so I used rubber washers to put some more pressure on the cover and chrome cover. It also save the paint from being damaged by the screw.

I had this problem on my '74 and McGivered it slightly improving the design... it was a few years ago, but I added a stylish black bolt at the bottom center on the beauty ring. It held it perfectly and I never had a problem again. Sorry no real pics, but you can see it here:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1234073916.jpg

Hey she's pretty Brother!

This had me chuckling. Nice solution! Picturing a piss-ant sitting on a 911 headlight is funny, tho...

This can be a bit of a beach. I did gray market conversions for a while in the 80's and even converted a couple of US cars back to German spec once I'd moved here and the $ had dropped low enough - so lots of headlight removing/installing experience. I'm surprised nobody mentioned cross-threading the screw at the bottom due to trying to start it at an impossible angle because the bottom of the headlight is sticking way out.

One thing that makes both removing and installing 911 headlights easier is if you don't think of them as just being hooked on top and attached at the bottom, but something more akin to a tupperware lid. Get the headlight hooked and seated at top, push down while simultaneously pushing the 4 and 8 o'clock positions back - not the glass but the ring. You need spatula like fingers and 3 hands (4 are even better). With a little luck, the headlight will pop over the lip on the bucket and you can let go and install the screw w/no hint of cross-threading.

Unfortunately Gary"Fingers"R won't have to out himself as a big-mouth-piss-ant the next time he has this prob because he's read the secrets in this thread.:p

PROBLEM RESOLVED

Thanks to those that contributed. Just for insurance, I did put a saftey wire behind the light just in case it pops of when driving.

I'm not sure a safety wire is such a hot idea. If it dangles from a wire while driving, it will bounce around and destroy the paint job on your fender or hood, depending on which way it gets blown (or both).

New H4 headlight: $200
New fender or hood paint job: $1,000

Take your pick.

I agree.
First of all it's screwed on. Where is it going to go?

Anyways, I'm out to the garage to put a safety wire on my door.:D

I had a brand new H4 come off in a race. It popped forward, flopped up and down for a while and soon broke the trim ring around the screw. Didn't hurt the paint at all, but it was sure weird to come back to the pit and discover just a screw where a whole light used to be. That was when I learned the trick about deforming the trim ring to put tension on the tab at the top... education costs money, usually.

It won't be dangling. I put a zip tie around the adjusting screws and the fed a wire through the drain hole in the bottom of the bucket then zip tied that underneath the bumper. If the light pops it will be held tight against the bucket.

When I need to replace the bulbs I just cut the first zip tie and then replace it. Already did a dry run and it took 30 seconds and will cost me $0.15 each time. Again, $0.15 is better than $300 for new H4s.

Well obviously you guys have not had the unique pleasure of seeing a headlight assembly flop forward then roll under a front wheel! Of course, I was on a bumpy dirt mountain road going cross country at the time....my new girlfriend (now my wife of 30 years) was not impressed.

In 36 years of driving my '66, this continues to be one of the biggest PITAs on the car. That and the low quality of the most recently available gasket, which seems to have poor adhesive holding the ring together.

Oh, one more thing. If you pound on or sit on the upper ring surface , guess what happens: It gets driven down onto the tab, and then you have a ding sticking up from the ring forever after. Ask me how I know...^%#^@# headlight assemblies anyway.

Adam912.out.

My '73 is now having this problem, now that I have stiffened the suspension. Can anyone who has successfully modified their H4 rings to "attach" correctly please provide details, and maybe some pics? I just cannot get my driver's side H4 to stay on.

Another H4 Story
 

Just got back into town from a 300 mile return trip from Steamboat Springs, CO. Was sitting at a stop light about 8 blocks from the house, thinking man is this old 70 E a great road car or what? Light turned green, revved up a bit, let out the clutch and then heard the most god awful grinding sound and then a good bump under the front passenger side wheel. Next thought, what the hell was that? Pulled safely through the intersection and got out to examine the car. Front passenger side H4 gone. Wires with the three way plug just sitting in the bucket. Looking back in the intersection there sat my nice shiny headlight smashed to bits by my own front wheel. Now reading this thread to put the lights back in and in examining the car realize that the threads on the little metal tab are just worn out. Not really stripped, just gone. Will have to chase in some more threads to get the next larger machine screw to bite and hopefully hold the $300 headlight in place. Now at least I realize why the headlight fell out in the first place. Felt pretty stupid the other day, now after reading everyone else's experiences with this less than perfect mounting system I don't feel quite so stupid.

The screw is part of the solution. The other part is to have the upper rim of the housing snugly sandwiched between the tab and the gasket.

It is, IMO, an awful design, since the screw pulls the headlight assembly upward when tightened. I've had a new H4 pop off at the track, and examining the parts, it was clear the screw held for a while after the upper rim slipped off. I solved it by gently recurring the upper trim arc so it was tighter to the top of the bucket. It's soft metal. You can do it by hand.

It's no surprise that rally cars often have metal straps screwed to the fender and rim of their H4s.