Actually the first time I took out a headlight the collars weren't a problem at all, but that was because the butchers at the used car lot I got the car from had swapped out a non-working one without reading the service manual (or visiting this site). The lower brackets had just been torn off when they stripped it off the donor wreck thinking that it was only secured by the upper bolts! Further conversations with the vendor only served to confirm that they probably didn't consult the manual simply because they can't read words bigger than 3 letters long - but that's all history now.