After thorough self examination, I've decided that somewhere back in time there must've been a crab in my particular evolutionary chain of events. Seems that lately, I prefer to move sideways as opposed to straight ahead.
The last few days have been rainy, and the garage door has to stay down because of it because of all of the bare metal. When that door is down, I may as well not even bother to go down there. There is so much junk crammed into just about every inch, that there is absolutely no room to work. Nonetheless, I went down there Tuesday, and again on Wednesday and sat in the 18" between the tail of the car, and the garage door and attempted something. Needless to say, nothing happened. Actually, the only thing that did happen was I managed to absolutely trash two pairs of jeans after only about an hour each day as a result of sitting w/ my legs under the rear of the car and just getting covered in bondo dust.
Today, I decided that I wasn't gonna get covered in bondo dust. It was a nice day, the door was open and I could drag anything, and everything out of the garage to make room for whatever project I set my mind to.
I left it all right where it sat.
Instead, I grubbed around for the head lights, the bucket assemblies, and the turn signals. I decided that I would spend however much time as required to completely refurbish the stuff, and install my new Halogen headlights on the slim premise that I may get to see what the "Angel Eyes" halo that surrounds the main head light might look like illuminated.
Now,.......as you've just read that,.......How much time should I set aside to clean, sand, paint, and do whatever else is required to make a set of halogen replacement lights fit where the old sealed beams used to go?
A couple of hours?
A half day?
The whole day?
It's not done yet?
If you picked the last, you'd be right. First we gotta talk about the "issues"
In 1978 Fairmont had clear front turn signal lenses. Mine coincidentally are junk. One is cracked, and the other is broken. I say all this because I actually like the clear lenses, over all of the subsequent years that had amber pieces. While that really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, considering that mine are un-usable the fact of the matter is that clear lenses are easier to duplicate ( if that's what I can call it) than amber. Purely because polycarbonate (i.e. Lexan) comes in clear.
Nextly, the headlight assy's had probably never had an occasion to be removed since they were installed at the factory. Not only was there dirt and grime as a tell tale as proof of that, there was also that orange kinda junk that happens when somebody lives on a dirt road, and something never sees the business end of a soapy rag. Add to that that the car had been previously repainted, was poorly masked, and the resulting yellow overspray was all over the things as well.
Lastly, there is other broken junk. One mounting point for the outer trim ring is gone, and the three little cushions that each headlight bucket rides on have broken.
So,...there you have it. I was gonna do all this junk and get another "diversion" behind me so that there will be one less thing to have at the end of the road to worry about.
Undeterred,.....I started the process. ( I actually moved forward to do this).
One housing cleaned, stripped of the old yeller paint, and resprayed. Notice the broke assed tab in the upper left corner. If you look to the center of the headlight area, you can see whats left of the factory supplied hard plastic bucket cusions.
And here's what I did to fix them.
When I was looking for something to use as a substitute for the factory cushions, the problem was how to hold them in place. Originally, I was planning on on countersinking a screw into some small chinky-doo piece of plastic. Then I saw these things hangin' on the hook at AZ. I figured what the hell. Easy to mount, easy to replace, and adjustable if they turn out to be too shallow. I bought a box of 15 for the 12 pieces that needed fixin'
The next thing you have to do is enlarge the hole in the back of each bucket fro the grommet that is on the tail of the new headlight. That was straightforward enough. A red, right turning pair of tin snips, and a die grinder w/ a flap wheel to smooth the burrs made short work of that.
However, If you decide to do this, you'll find out that cutting the buckets isn't all you gotta cut.
Again, if you have the right tools (in this case a die grinder w/ an aluminum cutting burr) clearancing that plastic that is hanging in the way takes less than a minute. Just know that you're gonna have to do it.
By mid day, I had to wait on paint to dry. I had already cleaned up the TS housings, and was trying to decide what to do about replacing the lens. Even though it isn't that thick, the old lens stands off the housing 1/2". Made sense to me to simply have a piece of lexan cut to fit the housing that was 1/2" thick. Granted, a little thick, but at this point, I'm not gonna try and glue acrylic together for the sake of keeping it similar to the factory lens.
I called the local plastics dude, asked if he could cut me a couple of small pieces while I waited, he said that he could, so I went on down.
And almost had a stroke when he charged me 33.00 for those two small pieces. I managed not to just the same.
When I got back, everything was still too tacky to handle, so, I went about modifying the TS housings to allow me to fit that thick assed piece of lexan on top.
See the problem is that there are two stand offs at each end, and one big diivider thingy in the middle, Now grinding off the end pieces was no problem, but if I just did that to the center, I'd break through so I had to fill it before I could grind it.
Filled from behind w/ standard body filler.
Then I ground on the thing. When I got it close I stopped and moved over to Mikes's bench sander.
80 grit long board paper, stuck to the garage floor.
after about a minute of that, you get this.
Painted, and shiny, w/ my still wrapped coke bottle lens on edge for effect.
By now it's late, but I'm able to finally put the headlights in the buckets, and screw the trim rings on.
This is about as good as a set of fairmont lights are gonna get. You can see the blue reflection from the H4 bulbs behind the reflector. Not important today, but those blue bulbs will eventually hit the thrash can, in favor of a standard white light.
Now it's dark. I wire nut the wires together, and form a pigtail that'll allow me to wire up the angel eyes, and see what the're gonna look like. The pic in the Summit catalog showed light completely surrounding the perimeter.
I got something a little different...
Again,.......the camera doesn't really tell the truth. Ther are 2 leds on op, and two on bottom. I guess the light is supposed to "beam" through the perimeter tube thingy ala fiber optics, but it don't exactly work that way.
Im ok with it, It's different.
And anybody who knows me, knows that that is what I'm all about.
What left is to decide what to do to the thick piece of lexan before I permanently glue that to the housing. I can sand the backside, or I bead blast it to "frost" it so it's no longer see through.
or I can leave it as is, and install amber led 1157's.
I can also find some window film, and apply it to the back side that would act as a diffuser. The stuff I'm finding isn't permanent though, and can be removed. I don't want this stuff coming off inside a glued together housing, so,....I'm kinda up in the air.
The last few days have been rainy, and the garage door has to stay down because of it because of all of the bare metal. When that door is down, I may as well not even bother to go down there. There is so much junk crammed into just about every inch, that there is absolutely no room to work. Nonetheless, I went down there Tuesday, and again on Wednesday and sat in the 18" between the tail of the car, and the garage door and attempted something. Needless to say, nothing happened. Actually, the only thing that did happen was I managed to absolutely trash two pairs of jeans after only about an hour each day as a result of sitting w/ my legs under the rear of the car and just getting covered in bondo dust.
Today, I decided that I wasn't gonna get covered in bondo dust. It was a nice day, the door was open and I could drag anything, and everything out of the garage to make room for whatever project I set my mind to.
I left it all right where it sat.
Instead, I grubbed around for the head lights, the bucket assemblies, and the turn signals. I decided that I would spend however much time as required to completely refurbish the stuff, and install my new Halogen headlights on the slim premise that I may get to see what the "Angel Eyes" halo that surrounds the main head light might look like illuminated.
Now,.......as you've just read that,.......How much time should I set aside to clean, sand, paint, and do whatever else is required to make a set of halogen replacement lights fit where the old sealed beams used to go?
A couple of hours?
A half day?
The whole day?
It's not done yet?
If you picked the last, you'd be right. First we gotta talk about the "issues"
In 1978 Fairmont had clear front turn signal lenses. Mine coincidentally are junk. One is cracked, and the other is broken. I say all this because I actually like the clear lenses, over all of the subsequent years that had amber pieces. While that really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, considering that mine are un-usable the fact of the matter is that clear lenses are easier to duplicate ( if that's what I can call it) than amber. Purely because polycarbonate (i.e. Lexan) comes in clear.
Nextly, the headlight assy's had probably never had an occasion to be removed since they were installed at the factory. Not only was there dirt and grime as a tell tale as proof of that, there was also that orange kinda junk that happens when somebody lives on a dirt road, and something never sees the business end of a soapy rag. Add to that that the car had been previously repainted, was poorly masked, and the resulting yellow overspray was all over the things as well.
Lastly, there is other broken junk. One mounting point for the outer trim ring is gone, and the three little cushions that each headlight bucket rides on have broken.
So,...there you have it. I was gonna do all this junk and get another "diversion" behind me so that there will be one less thing to have at the end of the road to worry about.
Undeterred,.....I started the process. ( I actually moved forward to do this).
One housing cleaned, stripped of the old yeller paint, and resprayed. Notice the broke assed tab in the upper left corner. If you look to the center of the headlight area, you can see whats left of the factory supplied hard plastic bucket cusions.
And here's what I did to fix them.
When I was looking for something to use as a substitute for the factory cushions, the problem was how to hold them in place. Originally, I was planning on on countersinking a screw into some small chinky-doo piece of plastic. Then I saw these things hangin' on the hook at AZ. I figured what the hell. Easy to mount, easy to replace, and adjustable if they turn out to be too shallow. I bought a box of 15 for the 12 pieces that needed fixin'
The next thing you have to do is enlarge the hole in the back of each bucket fro the grommet that is on the tail of the new headlight. That was straightforward enough. A red, right turning pair of tin snips, and a die grinder w/ a flap wheel to smooth the burrs made short work of that.
However, If you decide to do this, you'll find out that cutting the buckets isn't all you gotta cut.
Again, if you have the right tools (in this case a die grinder w/ an aluminum cutting burr) clearancing that plastic that is hanging in the way takes less than a minute. Just know that you're gonna have to do it.
By mid day, I had to wait on paint to dry. I had already cleaned up the TS housings, and was trying to decide what to do about replacing the lens. Even though it isn't that thick, the old lens stands off the housing 1/2". Made sense to me to simply have a piece of lexan cut to fit the housing that was 1/2" thick. Granted, a little thick, but at this point, I'm not gonna try and glue acrylic together for the sake of keeping it similar to the factory lens.
I called the local plastics dude, asked if he could cut me a couple of small pieces while I waited, he said that he could, so I went on down.
And almost had a stroke when he charged me 33.00 for those two small pieces. I managed not to just the same.
When I got back, everything was still too tacky to handle, so, I went about modifying the TS housings to allow me to fit that thick assed piece of lexan on top.
See the problem is that there are two stand offs at each end, and one big diivider thingy in the middle, Now grinding off the end pieces was no problem, but if I just did that to the center, I'd break through so I had to fill it before I could grind it.
Filled from behind w/ standard body filler.
Then I ground on the thing. When I got it close I stopped and moved over to Mikes's bench sander.
80 grit long board paper, stuck to the garage floor.
after about a minute of that, you get this.
Painted, and shiny, w/ my still wrapped coke bottle lens on edge for effect.
By now it's late, but I'm able to finally put the headlights in the buckets, and screw the trim rings on.
This is about as good as a set of fairmont lights are gonna get. You can see the blue reflection from the H4 bulbs behind the reflector. Not important today, but those blue bulbs will eventually hit the thrash can, in favor of a standard white light.
Now it's dark. I wire nut the wires together, and form a pigtail that'll allow me to wire up the angel eyes, and see what the're gonna look like. The pic in the Summit catalog showed light completely surrounding the perimeter.
I got something a little different...
Again,.......the camera doesn't really tell the truth. Ther are 2 leds on op, and two on bottom. I guess the light is supposed to "beam" through the perimeter tube thingy ala fiber optics, but it don't exactly work that way.
Im ok with it, It's different.
And anybody who knows me, knows that that is what I'm all about.
What left is to decide what to do to the thick piece of lexan before I permanently glue that to the housing. I can sand the backside, or I bead blast it to "frost" it so it's no longer see through.
or I can leave it as is, and install amber led 1157's.
I can also find some window film, and apply it to the back side that would act as a diffuser. The stuff I'm finding isn't permanent though, and can be removed. I don't want this stuff coming off inside a glued together housing, so,....I'm kinda up in the air.