Moisture in Headlights

It was just a few days ago I was admiring my wife’s car front headlight assemblies. I was noticing how clean and clear they looked. Even though her vehicle isn’t new those headlight assemblies still look brand new.

Now you may ask who goes around admiring front headlight assemblies? Last week I changed the headlight assemblies on my pickup that’s 20 years old because of glossed over lenses from oxidation. Then yesterday after a resent hail and rain storm one of the headlight assemblies on my wife’s car was full of moisture.

When it rains it pours as they say. Swapping out a headlight assembly on my wife’s car isn’t impossible but a lot more of a challenge than I want to tackle.
I began researching what can I do that’s simple and fast. So I watched some YouTube videos and got an idea.

Last year I bought a 1.5 gallon wet/dry vacuum with some mini attachments. I used it to vacuum the refrigerator coils under our fridge which by the way it’s time to do that again this year.

Today when the sun was out and relative humidity was 75% I went outside opened up the car hood.
I removed two of the lightbulbs in the wet assembly that I could easily reach with no problem. Yup there was plenty of moisture inside. It looked like it had been raining inside that one assembly.

I set up the shop vacuum and attached the hose to the discharge side. Instead of vacuuming I’m going to be blowing warm air into the light assembly using the Micro attachments I bought with the wet/dry. I was able to stick the micro attachments into the lightbulb hole with no issues.

Before I turned on the shop vacuum I asked myself what am I going to do if a section of the micro attachments come apart inside the light assembly? How would I retrieve that piece? So I very carefully removed the hose and attachments.

I had plenty of electrical tape. So I taped the joints on the attachment to make sure it didn’t accidentally fall off inside. After securing the attachment I reinserted the hose with attachments into the light assembly carefully angling the airflow so it would sweep the entire lens cover on the inside.

I was ready to start the purge not knowing if this was gonna work. I told myself once it’s flowing warm air just leave it alone for 15-20 minutes. I turned on the switch. The warm shop vacuum discharge was blowing into the light assembly and coming out the opening of the second bulb I removed.

So far everything was easy and effortless. Believe me this wasn’t hard. I checked my watch and went and sat down in the garage where I could observe. 20 minutes went by pretty fast. Then it was time to stop the purge. I turned off the shop vacuum and looked at the light assembly.

All the moisture was gone! The light assembly looked clean and pristine like it had before. I removed the hose and micro attachments and reinserted the two lightbulbs.

Then I noticed a lot of dead leaves under the car hood at the base of the windshield area referred to as the cowl. Since I had the shop vacuum already hooked up. I removed the micro attachments from the end of the vacuum hose.
Reattach the hose from the exhaust side to the vacuum side of the shop vacuum.

I started vacuuming all the dead leaves under the car hood. That worked amazingly well with no hose plugging. The vacuum cleaned the cowl up really nice.
I put everything away and added some windshield fluid to the car and closed the hood. I was all done.

If you don’t have a wet/dry shop vacuum it’s a worthwhile investment. Mine cost under $30 at Walmart with the micro attachments another $10. You might also be in luck and borrow one from a neighbor or family member.