Fog light disassembly / cleaning

[geoffco]

Hi folks,

In going over our new Passat Estate I noticed that the left fog light was, well, foggy...! I took the unit out and discovered that it had a significant amount of water inside and a crack in the back of the housing. This and a few small bits of slight trim misalignment in that area make us suspect that she's had a little bump at some point in her past - nothing in the paperwork unfortunately!

I got most of the water out through the little 'breathers' and dried the rest out on the radiator over night, then glued over the crack. That's all fine now and I hope it won't fill up again, but the inside of the clear plastic pretty flithy and there's an impressive line of algae along the bottom, so I'd like to open it up and clean it...

Has anyone opened one of these successfully and cleaned / rebuilt it? There are a number of hard plastic clips and what looks like a line of silicon (gasket or sealent?) all the way around, but a quick poke with a screwdriver made me think the clips would probably snap if I wasn't careful, so I wondered if there's a 'right way' to do it?

.... or am I better off looking for a used one on eBay at a reasonable price?

Cheers,
Geoff