Alright well i will go through the steps that i went through, maybe that will help although i do not remember any brass rings...perhaps the difference involves change in year models....?
-anyway....
1. take headlight out of the car and disconnect all bulbs and remove them(including blinker) and remove the clips found around the edge where the two parts of the headlights meet. they simply pop off and are not much trouble at all.
HEATING PROCESS - CRUCIAL PART
2. The headlight must go in the oven in order to heat up and partially liquify the black silicone type glue that holds the two parts together.
Heatin oven at low setting (i found 200 works pretty well for about 2 or 3 minute heating sessions and start slowly prying apart the two parts of the headlight....this is the longest process and it must be done slowly and one must be careful as to not chip or crack the plastic on either parts of the headlight (putty knife comes in handy here) the trick is to loosen it all around pretty good and then work on one end of the headlight and once you get one end unglued you can free up the rest of the headlight by easily prying....if that makes sense....
3. unscrew the two sections (blinker and lense) and seperate every part to see all of the parts
4. do what you need to do such as remove the amber strip, clean the lenses, paint the housing black or whatever other color ( in my case just left silver), and re-asssemble everything back together to the way in which u took it out. Now when i was removing the amber strip, i accidentally broke little shards of plastic off and therefore it was not exactly "clear" so i used chrome tape to cover where the amber strip once was (looks great and i reccommend it to everyone who is considering clear corners) To clean the lenses i just unscrewed them from their resting place and used windex to clean them....i used 'soft scrub' on the plastic headlight covering.
5. reheat the two sections and push back together when the black silicone type glue that was originally used to seal the headlight is hot and silicone the hell out of it....i used a lot of silicone glue to make sure that there is no condensation ever!!!
6. now just re-install the bulbs and wires and you're good to go.....
Hope this helps you out rubyred!!! Take a look in the gallery and tell me what you think of my job...personally i did an awesome job :D
p.s. if this doesn't help check out.... http://hometown.aol.com/seanmcelligott/