2015 Subaru Forester H4 2.5L Driver Side Headlight Assembly DIY Solutions LHT02838

Hey friends, it's Len here at 1A Auto. Today we're going to be working on a 2015 Subaru Forester. I'm going to be doing head lamp assemblies, it's a fun job, I want to be the guy that shows you how to do it. If you need these or any other parts, you can always click into 1Aauto.com and check us out, thanks.

First step is of course popping the hood, right? We're going to grab our new quality 1A Auto park. We're just gonna kind of hold them up next to each other. Looks about the same. We've got all the same shapes. If we grabbed a headlamp for the wrong year, it might be a little bit different. So we know we've got the right part at least so far. So that's just, that's done. Now we can go ahead and start uninstalling our old lamp and installing our new lamp.

So here we go, everybody we need to take off this bumper cover, right? So we can get behind there. Theoretically, you could probably try to get behind this fender well. You can just pull out this pin up here pry it away and get to it, but let's just remove this, the bottom area so we can go ahead and remove the bumper. That'll give everybody a clear view of what's going on. So I'm going to see what's holding everything on here. It looks as though we're going to take off this pin right here, okay? So basically you're just going to stick in your small screwdriver. You're going to try to pry the center out. All right? If you use a small screwdriver or you can also use some kind of little forky tool if you have one. But basically we need the center to come down and out. And then once that does, we can pull the whole pin.

So let's just take a walk. We're going to look at all the different areas that's going to be holding this on. So we've got one there. All right, got one right here. Okay, another, we don't have to worry about those. That's just for a little air duct under there. This one, this one, and then let's see, looks like this one. So we'll remove all those real quick and then we can move on to the next step.

Okay, so here we go. I'm going to try my little forky tool, I got one. I'm going to try to go in between the outer portion of this and the inner portion, and just try to pull the center portion out from the outer portion. A lot of times they get stuck in there. They might break, 'cause you issues, you might want to scream and fight and cuss, and whatever, but just keep trying. We'll just pull that out. So you see how the center part dropped down. That means it's in the unlocked position, so these little tabs can squeeze in. If I locked it, it would push those tabs out, which would lock it in, okay? So I'm going to do the same thing for all those going around. Once we get to that step, we'll move along.

We've got fog lights in here, so if there's lights then there must be power going to them. So we're gonna need to make sure that we disconnect the wiring going to the back of those fog lamps. So I'll go ahead and put down these pins and we'll check for those wires, were wearing our safety glasses and keys, dirt or anything falls down. Here we are, we've got our connector. Just separate those two ears. Pull it out, nice water in there, that's good. When I put this back together, I'll just put a little bit of silicone paste and that'll help keep the moisture out from these terminal ends so that way they're at won't get rotted and corroded and eventually stop working on this person. So I'll go ahead and take care of that for them. Anyway, so we've got these disconnected now, we'll do the same to the other side.

All right, so we've got our little inside fender here. This goes up and around. We're not going to be removing the fender so much as removing the bumper cover from it, but we're going to move it around and see where it's attached. So I've got a little push pin right here, so I'm going to go ahead and try to remove the center from the outside. See if I can get it, it's a tight one it's okay, here we are. We got it removed, I pulled out the center first and then I went ahead and I grabbed the inside so we can set that aside. Now we're going to take our bumper. We're just going to try to separate it from the fender, there we go, it's got some little clips, so we're going to have to pay attention to those as we go. It's going to come all the way up along here. We don't want to pull the bumper out this way. We need to pull it out and away first before we can do that.

So we found a pin on this side right over here. Odds are we're probably going to find the same pan over on the other side, right? So let's not jump ahead and start tearing this apart too much. We're going to go over the other side, remove that and then we'll go ahead and we'll start pulling this apart and we can bring it down and remove stuff from the top.

Okay, so here we go. We've got a little view, we can see what's going on. Get a little spot right there. That's where a clip that's inside this is going to clip into and they're going to continue going up this bumper. So when we hold onto the bumper cover, well we want to make sure as well, we're pulling it away, we're not going to put like a crimp in this thing, right? We don't want to put like a big old, fold this puppy in half, mess up our paint job. So if you can, you try to get your arm back there, try to push out from in there. It's going to be difficult, there we are. We've got that. We'll come over the other side and do the same thing. There we go, I'm gonna try to push from the inside. I'm sort of lifting up a little bit at the same time as trying to pull away.

But meanwhile, all I'm basically trying to do from the inside is push. And I'm trying not to put too much on the outside and fold this puppy. We don't want to damage our paint. I don't want to pay for this guy's paint job. I just want to fix his job, I just want to do my job. Here we go. Here we are, feels good. Everything's nice and loose from the bottom. Yes, beautiful. So now we'll move along the top, our little screwdriver, there we go, life it right up. Okay. We're gonna do the same thing for all of them, now

Get this one, so it's ready, there we are. Now I'm just going to go ahead and I'm going to start it back in there a little bit. Like I told Ya, I'm just going to leave it sitting there. Okay, here we go, keep on moving. That one came out nice and easy. Start it back in. Set that aside someplace where we can find it. We didn't need those trim tools, so that's nice. Okay friends, this puppy should move around fairly easily now, feels pretty good. There might be a couple of clips going along the headlamp assembly and the bumper, we'll see. Now I'm just going to go ahead and remove these last two that we left in. This one's going to be nice, difficult. I'm going to hold onto our bumper. Like I said, we don't want it to fall. We don't want to scratch up this nice, beautiful paint and somebody worked real hard on doing it up nice.

Okay. Grab onto it. I'm just gonna shake it around. See what's going on. Here we go. Just like that, got our wire. It's just kind of sitting over that one. Alright, so we're going to look at the back of the head lamp now. What we want to do is we want to make sure we disconnect any electrical connectors that are gonna hold us up from pulling our assembly out, right under this one, which is a main connector. There's a little push tab, we're going to squeeze it with our finger. Try to wiggle it, break it free. We always take a look inside the connector, make sure that there's no green or blue or any other funny color, which there isn't, it looks pretty great. Okay, next we have this little right here, got another little push button. Push it, pull that down. Perfect. We'll get those right out of the way.

Okay, let's move on to the next step, and that would be removing the assembly. So we've got one little push connector right here. We're going to do the same thing that we've been doing. We're going to lift from the center, get that part up, use our little forky tool or whatever you happen to be using. Remove it, we'll set it aside where we can find it. Now we're going to switch to using a ten millimeter or if you wanted to use a Phillips head, you could try doing that, but I would just go with a ten. We're going to turn it to the left, or counterclockwise. We're going to leave this one in a little bit. We can take it all the way out. We can look at it if we want, we can, you know, take a picture, whatever we want to do with it. But anyway, we want to make sure that it's still left in a few threads in the end. Just like that. Okay. It's nice and loose, but it's loose, and it's still in a little bit. This one right here, I can go ahead and remove completely.

There we are, as you can tell, it's beveled, right? It's got a little bevel you can see, that's so it can fit nice and snug inside this headlight assembly, so you want to make sure that that one goes back where it came from. So now I've got those two screws out. I've got this one still in a little bit. I'm going to come on down over here again, I'm going to remove this little clip, and then a little push clip, just gonna pull out the center just like we've been doing. Okay, here we are. See if I can get that whole clip out. It's going to break, just because why not? Right.

Okay. Here we are.,I got it out. If you wanted to, you can go ahead and replace it. You probably should. I have a whole bunch of these so I will replace it. But for now, I'll just set it aside. I'm gonna remove this ten millimeter right here, turning it counterclockwise to remove it. It's pretty basic, but I'll just say it. I'll put that down on the floor so I can find it later, or now, I got it. Okay. We've got two more ten millimeters here and here so we'll go ahead and we'll get this one almost all the way out.

It's hard from this angle 'cause I'm a righty. There we are, we're going to do this one, this one I can remove fully if I want to, which I do want to. If you have an electric electric gun for this, it might be helpful for you. You don't have to spend 20 minutes doing caveman actions like using a ratchet like this. There we are. Okay, this is moving around pretty freely at this point. So now I'm going to go ahead and remove this last bolt, pretty close. Okay, get that right out of the way. Perfect. We'll put this up right where we can't lose it.

So now we have a clear view of what's going on with our headlamp. It should be able to move this around quite a bit. I'm going to take out our last bolt up here. I'm holding the headlamp assembly so it doesn't fall down and hurt me or anybody else. There we are everybody, now we've removed our headlight assembly. If you wanted to, you can go ahead and remove the other side of the same exact way.

Hey friends, it's Len down at 1A Auto. Today I want to do a quick product comparison for you. We're working on a 2015 Subaru Forester. I just removed this headlamp assembly, I'm gonna be putting in a brand new quality 1A Auto part. I just want to show you that the two parts look exactly the same. Okay? From the front, as you could tell, they look the same and exception of just one thing. This one looks kind of cruddy. This one looks well, brand new, especially if I took off all this nice wrap that they put on here. Maybe I'll put it on my sandwich later. So if we turn this around, we can see that we have all of our bulb assemblies here, right? All our connectors and everything. We've got our mounting holes, we've got a little clippy do there for when our bolt comes through to hold it in, right there, okay?

I'll set that right there, we'll grab our brand new quality 1A Auto part. Look at this, comes with brand new bulbs and everything. You can't beat it. This is beautiful, got our new connectors, new bulbs. This thing's ready to just plug and play. Can't wait. So we got our securing fasteners here, right? This is where we're going to be connecting everything in, holding this into the vehicle nice and securely as you can tell, it's the exact same as the other one, an exception of just well brand new, better condition. So with that said, I don't see any reason why I wouldn't install this quality 1A Auto part into this vehicle, and if you need this or any other part, you can always check us out at 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

We've got our lamp assembly, right? We've got our fender. This is a nice pretty painted surface. We want to make sure that we don't go chiseling it up with this plastic or vice versa. So we're going to come in very carefully. Try to bring it in along here, line this hole up with that right there and then the other side should set in. So I want to come in, bring it up over the top there, there we go. Just going to get this one started in. I'm not going to go ahead and tighten it down or anything. I just want to get started. I need to be able to move this headlamp assembly around. To start all the other ones. I'm going to do this one.

There we are. It's not too tight. I can still move it around. Now what I'm going to do, so I'm going to grab this nice beautiful black piece that we had right? I'm gonna need to bring it over. This right here, it's going to go there, this right here is going to go up there somewhere and then same thing over on this side, so I'm gonna grab it, there we are. Let me see where my bolt holes are. One right here, I'm holding the black piece so it doesn't fall down. It's very light, so odds are it's not going to hurt me, but better safe than sorry. This one might be a little bit hard to get started. I can move the lamp assembly around. That's why I left it loose, right? Let's see if I can get it. I can't see it, I'm kind of shooting blind here. Just move stuff around, wiggle it. All right, so we got that one in. Come over here.

Try to get these lined up. You might need to use your little socket and extension here. Just try and get your fingers in that deep is a little bit hard, so I'm just gonna put it back on. It's ten millimeter, we remember that. Just get it started in. I'm not tightening it yet. Just getting it started. Very important, we don't want to tighten anything up until everything started, okay? So we've got our brand new little push clip that I told you I was going to find, let me see if I can push it in there. I'm trying to push the bottom side in first. Get it latched in, this has a little Phillips head, that works for removing it basically, putting it in. We're just gonna try and tap it in. Perfect. It's going nowhere.

Let's move along. So here we go, we've got our connectors that are going to go to the backside of that headlight assembly. I have a little bit of dielectric lube that I'm going to use. Just go like that, easy peasy. This is basically just going to keep the moisture out from getting in there causing any type of corrosion or anything we don't want going on in there. You don't have to get too crazy with it. It wasn't in their prior, so is what it is. Now I'm going to take my connectors. I'm going to put my lock facing where my lock little pin is, squeeze it. This one, same thing. Lock on the big one is facing down. The lock on the smaller one was facing out. Okay, here we go.

Here it is. I already clicked this one in. I'll just double check it. Give them a little tug. There we are, it looks pretty good so far. I'm going to leave this lens cover on here for now. Okay. Because when I go ahead and I put the cover on the bumper cover, if I ended up bumping up against my brand new plastic and I scuff it, I'm going to be pretty mad, so I'll just leave it on. It's a nice protective layer and now we can move over and do the same to the other headlamp assembly. Let's do it.

So here we go. We've got our bumper cover, we want to make sure that when we're coming in we're going to pay special attention to where the corners of the bumper are and where they're going to be kind of, connecting into where the fenders are. So we want to just kind of hang it low. I prefer to just hang it low and then come in and I can move it up to where it needs to go after. But basically I'm just going to get it set in like this. I'm going to put in a couple of my push clamp connectors here that'll hold up the bumper cover for me. You can put in as many as you want. Even do them all if you wanted to, but I'm not going to worry too much about that. There we go. That's good enough for now.

So now we'll come along. I left the plastic on, like I said, so we don't scuff up headlamps too much. So right here you can see all those little holes. And on this black piece there's little, I don't know, hooky do's, we'll call them. Call them what you want, I'm going to call it a hooky do. These need to go between the fender and this black piece. So I'm gonna try to pull it down. Can you see it? There we are, comes all the way up. It's got to be harder to pull these ones down. I mean realistically, pretty much impossible. So just do the best you can. Okay?

I'm gonna try to pull the bumper up, get it so it's semis situated. Might need to give it a little tug. And we're on, right along here, it seems like it needs to come over a little bit more. So I'm just going to try to maneuver the bumper cover as much as I can without causing too much, you know, I want to try to hold this down so I don't scuffed up my fender, basically. I'm gonna need to try to get this down. I'm just going to push it, there we are, I'm just going to go ahead. It's not my car. So here we go. Bonk, bonk, bonk. Here we are, here we go. I'm just kind of pulling.

Beautiful. Comes along the headlight assembly perfect. That looks great. Get this one in here, if you're messing with these things and this is pushed back in, then it's in the locked position. You're going to need to just get it back up. Okay? When I'm pushing them in, I'm pushing at the bottom area of it and then once it's in, I push in the center.

Okay. Just double check. Make sure we got them all. Okay. Friends, let's get under. So we have our fog lamp assembly wiring here. When I took it apart, I noticed there was some moisture that came out, so like I said, I just want to put a little bit of dielectric grease in there. This will help keep the moisture out. You could try to get it around the rubber if you want to. I mean, as long as you're getting it where the terminal lens are and where they're going to connect into there. That's all that matters. I'm gonna do the same to the other side, we'll connect them together and tuck them up in there. It might be a good idea to use something like a wire tie to try to anchor the wiring so it doesn't bounce around and you know, I don't know. Get broken or anything like that. It wasn't like that. So the purpose of this video, I'm just going to leave it the way that the customer had it, move along.

Doing the same thing to the other one here? Just getting a pretty good coating in there. Nothing too crazy. You know? I just want to try to keep the moisture out. I can go ahead and connect this. Here we are. Do the same to the other side, there it is. So I wanna just tuck this in. This is going to go under there just like that. This part's going to go under that part. Okay. We got a little spot for a push connector here, so I'll grab one of those. Got our little push button down so it's ready to be in to the locked position just like that. Do the other side, and put this lip up in there. This lip up in this side. Okay? Got my connector, whatever you want to call it, push clip, get it in there. Lock that puppy in. Perfect, okay, so now we can grab the rest of our push connectors. We're just going to go down the line. I guess, where it belongs, like that.

Then we'll go to this one, so if I can get it lined up just right. Very nice. We'll keep moving, we didn't remove that. Go here, there we are. Now, we can just analyze it. We've got a couple more push clips in my hand, so I'm going to see what we took out where we need it. We took one out down this way, so I'm going to come in right here. I'm gonna put one up in there. See if I can get it up in, there we are. You've got one on the other side. Should be right over here. Yep. Nice. Let's see if I can get it in? Now all I'm doing here is I'm putting this through three pieces of plastic that move around, so you know, you might struggle with it a little bit, but you can do it. If I can do it, you can do it. People say that type of stuff all the time.

There we are, we're just going to pop that like that. Okay? All right, so we remember we took a push pin out from right here and one out from the other side. So we're going to go ahead and put those in. I'm just going to slide it in, hopefully, let's see what wants to do what I want it to do. There we go, lock it. Good. I think it looks nice and smooth. We'll walk over the other side and do the same thing, lock it in, check our line. Looks good.

Those look great. All we have to do now is just align them, we should be good to go. So now for aligning this, all we would do is we would turn this, you can use a Phillips head screwdriver if you have one short enough, or you can use an eight millimeter, either a wrench or maybe a ratchet with a socket. You're going to want to set it up, you know, facing a wall or whatever, approximately 25 feet away and line them up. So we'll go ahead and get ready and we'll get that done.

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 offside of the road on the passenger side and have the driver's side low enough to not bling oncoming traffic.

Thanks for watching. Visit 1Aauto.com, your place for DIY auto repairs for great parts, great service, and more content.