Today I went to replace the chrome "eyebrows" on my 89 244, as the old ones were dull and peeling, and I had gotten a pair of good ones over the weekend. I figured it would be easy, as the headlights look like new, suggesting they had recently been replaced. The left headlight came right out, and that side was done in about 5 minutes.

On to the right side. The two nuts on the outboard side came off OK, but the ones next to the radiator felt like the bolts wanted to turn in the plastic sockets without unscrewing. I gave them a shot of PB Blaster and spent about 20 minutes cleaning up the grill to give it time to work. That got the lower one (the one that's really awkward due to being right behind the A/C line) to break loose, but the top one still wouldn't budge. More Blaster, and some more time spent on other things. Half an hour later, still no go. Time for more serious measures. I didn't want to mess with a drill or a Dremel if I didn't have to, so what I did was this: Got a small pair of needle nose Vise Grips and clamped them tightly on the very end of the bolt. Then went in behind them with an open end wrench, and got the nut broken loose. Unscrewed it as far as it would go, until it ran into the area of threads that had been mangled by the Vise Grips. Pushed the headlight assembly forward, clamped the Vise Grips on the bolt again, this time below the nut, (actually, between the headlight frame and the body metal, in the gap that was now there with all the other nuts off, and this one loose) which let me get the nut the rest of the way off.

This was when I discovered that the ears the parking light mounts to were broken off, and the only thing holding it on was the wires, and the previous owner's imagination. OK. Go back inside, find my spare right headlight, take them both apart and swap the frames. This frame had not one but TWO damaged bolts (that I had drilled the nuts off of to get it off the car) so I had to pound them both out and replace them. After that, everything went back together easily enough. I decided that in case I ever had to take it apart again, I didn't want a repeat, so I put anti-seize on all the threads---even took the other side back apart and did those too.

The car looks a lot better with its shiny new eyebrows, so it was worth the hour plus the job ended up taking.