diff --git a/glanceclient/common/http.py b/glanceclient/common/http.py
index e8f1d4d..10c680c 100644
--- a/glanceclient/common/http.py
+++ b/glanceclient/common/http.py
@@ -135,7 +135,8 @@ class HTTPClient(_BaseHTTPClient):
         self.session.headers["User-Agent"] = USER_AGENT
 
         if self.auth_token:
-            self.session.headers["X-Auth-Token"] = self.auth_token
+            self.session.headers["X-Auth-Token"] = encodeutils.safe_encode(
+                self.auth_token)
 
         if self.language_header:
             self.session.headers["Accept-Language"] = self.language_header
diff --git a/glanceclient/common/utils.py b/glanceclient/common/utils.py
index 9d584fd..88144ef 100644
--- a/glanceclient/common/utils.py
+++ b/glanceclient/common/utils.py
@@ -449,8 +449,7 @@ def memoized_property(fn):
 
 def safe_header(name, value):
     if value is not None and name in SENSITIVE_HEADERS:
-        v = value.encode('utf-8')
-        h = hashlib.sha1(v)
+        h = hashlib.sha1(value)
         d = h.hexdigest()
         return name, "{SHA1}%s" % d
     else:
diff --git a/glanceclient/tests/unit/test_http.py b/glanceclient/tests/unit/test_http.py
index f7830b7..5a0eec7 100644
--- a/glanceclient/tests/unit/test_http.py
+++ b/glanceclient/tests/unit/test_http.py
@@ -210,6 +210,14 @@ class TestClient(testtools.TestCase):
         self.assertEqual(b"ni\xc3\xb1o", encoded[b"test"])
         self.assertNotIn("none-val", encoded)
 
+    def test_auth_token_header_encoding(self):
+        # Tests that X-Auth-Token header is converted to ascii string, as
+        # httplib in python 2.6 won't do the conversion
+        value = u'ni\xf1o'
+        http_client_object = http.HTTPClient(self.endpoint, token=value)
+        self.assertEqual(b'ni\xc3\xb1o',
+                         http_client_object.session.headers['X-Auth-Token'])
+
     def test_raw_request(self):
         """Verify the path being used for HTTP requests reflects accurately."""
         headers = {"Content-Type": "text/plain"}
diff --git a/glanceclient/tests/unit/test_utils.py b/glanceclient/tests/unit/test_utils.py
index 0b2d6d9..d2b73dc 100644
--- a/glanceclient/tests/unit/test_utils.py
+++ b/glanceclient/tests/unit/test_utils.py
@@ -168,7 +168,9 @@ class TestUtils(testtools.TestCase):
                          utils.safe_header('somekey', None))
 
         for sensitive_header in utils.SENSITIVE_HEADERS:
-            (name, value) = utils.safe_header(sensitive_header, 'somestring')
+            (name, value) = utils.safe_header(
+                sensitive_header,
+                encodeutils.safe_encode('somestring'))
             self.assertEqual(sensitive_header, name)
             self.assertTrue(value.startswith("{SHA1}"))