I bought the headlight lenses two years ago but after the first bolt started spinning in its plastic housing, I have postponed the project. Now that I had the car in a garage, and the garage is full of power tools and epoxies (I am building a boat), I felt courageous enough to tackle it.

Hard to justify the frustration with this fancy bit of Volvo engineering, but there is just no way, no how, what they did with burying the bolt heads in soft plastic is a smart solution. But then again, maybe they didn't expect this is needed after 23 years?

Out of 7 bolts, 3 were spinning. Bring out the dremmel tool. Even that was tough because no space to angle it. I also used the dremmel cutter disk to cut off the old lenses around the perimeter, which helped popping them off the plastic base.

More cleaning and grinding out the old sealant - about 2 hrs total. Remove old and cut-off bolts with some clamps, vise-grips, jigs, etc. Another 1.5 hrs. Clean all dirt with acetone.

I sealed the new lenses with West Marine 8200 compound, which seems similar to 3M 4200 or 5200 but much cheaper. I also bought 1/4"x1" stainless bolts, nuts, washers and lock washers at West Marine. You can also use nylock nuts (with nylon inserts) that don't need lock washers but they need to be turned on the bolt by a wrench right away, a bit laborous. I had to drill the holes out so that the bolts go through freely, mixed West epoxy, added high density filler (West 404), fed the bolts half way, put the epoxy goop under the bolt heads, and then torqued the bolts into the seats. Let the epoxy cure or at least harden before moving ahead. Also lubricated the adjustment screws so that I can actually turn them by hand.

All in all, 2 days of hard labor. Spent $50 on the lenses, $8 on the nuts and bolts, $7 on the 8200 glue, and very little on epoxy. I guess I saved $300 over having a mechanic do it and force me to buy new plastic bases after he will have broken them.