Behind bars!

Spend an afternoon of this weekend to finally get these fuckers installed on my bug, i'm talking about these repro Porsche stoneguards which were used in the 50's and 60's on Porsche 356's when they raced them in rallyes and such to protect the headlights from getting hit by stones.

Originally these were designed to fit onto the headlights by removing the glass and fitting these instead, obviously using different lenses which were watertight.
But since i find the look with the original glass underneath much nicer they had to be adapted a little bit by taking of a few centimeters of the inner edge, thanks so much for taking care of that Jens!
Now they should fit without any trouble, but since i was taking off the headlights anyway i decided to swap the right headlight's glass, which was a Hella glass, for the same Bosch glass that was on the left side.
Symmetry is everything you know, i'm all for that!
And while i was at it i might just as well exchange the adjusting screws for the lens position, they were so worn out i could hardly unscrew them anymore, and the glass rubber which was totally worn down on the left side.
Separating the headlights wasn't such a hard task but getting them back together turned out to be a harder, and even quite dangerous task!
The clamps used to hold the lens housing in position on the outer chromed ring have the tendancy to jump out when you're trying to press them in, i had two of them miss my eye just by a few inches and one even hit my forehead, these rusty little fuckers came out shooting like a bullet!!

So i decided it was time to put on a pair of shades since i could'nt find my safety glasses anywhere i might just as well look cool doing this little job.
Btw. today i stumbled upon a thread on the samba (link) dedicated to mounting these early headlights and guess what the main thing was they adviced... WEAR SAFETYGLASSES! Always nice to read such a thing afterwards... lol!

Once reassembled, leaving some space on the upper side of the glass to be able to press them in a bit, i mounted them back on the bug and tried to fit in the stoneguards.
The right side went just fine, but i had to take apart the left headlight two times over because everytime i tried pressing in the grill the clamps came loose on the inside... grrrrrrr
After some swearing and adjusting (read: hitting it with a hammer) everything fitted to my satisfaction and i'm pretty pleased with the end result.

        It gives my bug a pretty thick look!! Just as i like it...