• Welcome, Guest! We hope you enjoy the excellent technical knowledge, event information and discussions that the BMW MOA forum provides. Some forum content will be hidden from you if you remain logged out. If you want to view all content, please click the 'Log in' button above and enter your BMW MOA username and password.

    If you are not an MOA member, why not take the time to join the club, so you can enjoy posting on the forum, the BMW Owners News magazine, and all of the discounts and benefits the BMW MOA offers?

'98 K1200RS Headlight Lens Separation?

cbmcksr

New member
Working on my 1998 K1200RS. Nothing terribly wrong; just in need of much TLC, removal of grime & corrosion etc .... So lots of dissassembly, cleaning & polishing, and re-assembly. Got my headlight lens polished nicely but noticed that there were a number of stains on the INSIDE of the lens. There are two clips on the lens that appear to hold it to the chassis that holds the bulb, etc .... but when I removed those clips and tried to separate the glass (after painstakingly looking for any screws or other fasteners I may had missed) from the plastic housing, I managed to crack the glass :banghead. So now I'm in the market to replace the headlight assembly and will obviously source a used one, but does anyone know if there is a way to separate the glass entirely so that it can be properly cleaned?
 
Working on my 1998 K1200RS. Nothing terribly wrong; just in need of much TLC, removal of grime & corrosion etc .... So lots of dissassembly, cleaning & polishing, and re-assembly. Got my headlight lens polished nicely but noticed that there were a number of stains on the INSIDE of the lens. There are two clips on the lens that appear to hold it to the chassis that holds the bulb, etc .... but when I removed those clips and tried to separate the glass (after painstakingly looking for any screws or other fasteners I may had missed) from the plastic housing, I managed to crack the glass :banghead. So now I'm in the market to replace the headlight assembly and will obviously source a used one, but does anyone know if there is a way to separate the glass entirely so that it can be properly cleaned?


On a damaged headlamp from K1200RS that was not useful as a unit, I have tried to separate the glass from the rest... I found out that you CANNOT... as you did found out.

On some German cars they sometimes use a type of glue that you can melt (or soften) with heat gun - hence on some of these it is possible to separate the glass using heat - but not on these K1200RS headlight assy (made by Hella as stamped inside).

A few years ago, on another K1200RS forums someone came up with a fairly creative way to clean some of the inside of the glass surface. I never tried it, but I am just posting by memory as this Forum site is closed now:
- he tied a small flat/round metal piece inside soft cloth piece - size was just large enough to be able to slide thru one of the bulb hole (either upper H7 or lower H3 hole). You have only a 1/2 inch hole to work with.

- If I can remember properly his small metal piece had a hole in middle (washer maybe) and he tied a thin metal wire to it (or fishing line) so that he could take it out easily after job if done. Of course the wire was attached in middle of metal, but wire did not touch external lower part of cloth.

- he dropped a bit of rubbing alcohol thru one of the bulb hole (headlamp on table with glass facing down), then inserted the small metal piece wrapped with fine cloth

- finally, to create some rubbing movement, he used a strong magnet moving across the glass from the outside. Thus forcing the cloth to rub all over the inside glass.

I have never tried his technique, so I have no idea how well it works or tedious it would be considering you can only use 1/2 inch of cloth. But the method shows "lateral / creative thinking".
 
Last edited:
I love the idea of creative thinking, but I'd want to see this one actually work. There comes to mind about a half dozen potential flaws in the proposed approach.

That said, I've never had the need to do the given job, so I have no idea what would or wouldn't work.
 
Back
Top