39 Ford Project

[BamaNomad]

Fantastic work!

[Custer55]

Fantastic work!

Thanks Gary,

[Custer55]

For my next project I decided to come up with a plan for the headlights. When I took apart the headlight buckets to clean them up and repaint them they had 6 volt sealed beams installed behind the original headlight lenses. After some research I discovered this was not correct. They originally used a reflector that a separate bulb mounted in which mounted into an adjuster/aiming bracket.
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This is what the adjuster looks like in the headlight bucket. It has 2 clips to hold the reflector in place but those won't work because they were trimmed to install the sealed beam bulbs. Not a big deal as I should be able to just screw the reflectors to the adjusters. New reflectors are available for about $40. each so I am going to try to make my own before spending $80. on a pair of those.
Speedway Motors sells a halogen bulb kit that comes with the bulbs, mount base, and wiring pigtail for $40. so I am going to give that a try. Link is below.

https://www.speedwaymotors.com/Speedway-12-Volt-Quartz-Halogen-Headlight-Conversion-Kit,2980.html

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To make the reflectors I had an old satellite dish which was about 24 gauge metal so that should work fine. It just needs to hold a small bulb so it doesn't need to be heavy duty at all. Since I don't have an original reflector to go by I just used the old sealed beam bulb backside as a guide to what the shape should be.
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The first step was to drill and 1/8" hole in the center and put some layout lines on the metal blank after sanding off all the old paint.
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Next was to start the shaping process. I used my shrinking stump to get some tucks on the outside edge to start shaping the piece.
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After smoothing that out on the planishing hammer it has a good shape stated but still need more compared to my profile gauge.
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I then used my kick shrinker to bunch up the metal more on the outside edges.
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Next I hammered the center into my panel beater/sand bag to stretch the metal in the center to give it more shape.
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After a bunch of time on the planishing hammer it's looking much better.

[Custer55]

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Then I used my homemade compass to mark where the flange to fit in the adjuster needed to be.
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Loaded up in the bead roller to tip over the mounting flange. it took a couple of times around, trimming off some of the excess metal, and some stretching on the flange to get it where it needed to be.
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Here is the pair pretty much done. They are not exact duplicates of each other but close enough as they fit in the adjusters just fine.
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And here is a view from the other side.

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The next step was to drill holes in the reflectors and the adjuster brackets to hold them in place. I clamped the reflectors together to the holes would be the same from 1 to the other. I used a 3 hole pattern and drilled the holes a bit off from a perfect pattern so they could only mount one way. The adjuster brackets also had a small tab built in so I notched the reflector flange for the tab and made sure it was the same on both reflectors so they will work on either side.
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The final step was to polish out the reflectors by drilling the center holes out to 1/4" so I could mount them on a 1/4" rod in my drill press and sand them out spinning in the drill press with 80 grit progressively up to 2500 grit and then polishing them out. I then clear coated them with clear gloss wheel coating. Not perfect by any means but they should work good enough.
20240819_145650c.jpg And here they are mounted in the headlight buckets
Brian

[Custer55]

I might be done posting on this sight. Just did a update on the project and it is a real pain to do anything on here with the new website. I have been posting on the other trifive site as well so you can see my updates there.
Sorry, Brian

[Belair-o]

Brian,
I hope you don't close the door quite yet, but will come back and try the fixes that are being incorporated.
Thanks for all your postings - I have learned a lot.
Thanks, Doug

[Custer55]

Brian,
I hope you don't close the door quite yet, but will come back and try the fixes that are being incorporated.
Thanks for all your postings - I have learned a lot.
Thanks, Doug

I will try again. Hopefully this will get a lot better.

[Custer55]

Ok, I am going to give this another try. Will see how it goes.

Ok, the website is not letting me upload any photos at all. Says the image size is to big. I have no idea how to resize my photos and don't have the time to f@#k around with if if I did.
Sorry guys! I f you are interested in following the updates you will have to check them out on the other trifive website.
Brian

[Belair-o]

Thanks for having tried again. Doug

[TriChrome]

Custer55 - Hope you'll give us another try. We just now doubled the maximum size of images configured on the site. In the past 10 years phones and digital cameras have gotten much higher resolutions, internet speeds have increased, and new image formats like .webp and .png are supported in browsers, so the old limits were probably too low. While we've never had images nearly this large before, it can now support up to 9.0 MB!

[Custer55]

Ok , I edited my post from 8-21 and the photos did load ok. I think I figured out what the problem was. My camera on my phone was set at 64mp so the files were to big. I did figure out how to resize them on my computer so I will try to re-load the last 2 updates as well. Wish me luck!!

[Custer55]

Been working on some small projects lately. First one was to get the hood sides to line up better.
20240822_151346c.jpgThis was as good as I could get the passenger side lined up (drivers side was similar) as I was out of adjustment to move it up any further. I don't know if this is as good as it ever was or things just moved a bit when I did the firewall replacement. Guessing the later as I did have to fight the hood hinge alignment to get the hood to line up.

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To gain more adjustment I made new brackets to connect the hood sides to the hood hinges. The original is on the bottom.
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Here the new bracket is bolted on the hood hinge. This clears the rivet for the hinge pivot better so it should give me all the adjustment I need.

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The alignment looks much better now. Basically did the same thing on the drivers side as well.

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I was sick of using a prop rod to hold the hood open so I got the hood spring and bracket back in place. Just one on the drivers side only on this car as the hood is pretty light weight.
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And the inside parking brake handle bolted back in place. I just needed to replace a couple of springs to make it work properly again, besides the clean up and repaint.

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At this point I had the dash out to get primer and paint on it. One thing that didn't line up very well was the knob that opens and closed the windshield to the opening in the dash.
To get more adjustment I added a piece like this to both sides of the mount bracket so I could file out the holes.

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With that done I will be able to get the adjuster lined up to the hole in the dash much better now.

[Custer55]

Next up was some work on the windshield frame before painting that. Originally the frame was chrome plated but that is not in the budget at this time.
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A while back when I had taken the windshield frame apart I used some flat headed stainless bolts to put it back together. While functional they didn't have the same look as the original screws.
So I decided to fix that by grinding the heads to shape of the original screws as seen on the left in this shot.
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I had 19 bolts (10-32 size) to regrind the shape of the heads so I came up with this to make it easier. I chucked a 10-32 nut into my drill, so I could put a bolt with a jam nut into the nut in the chuck. That way I didn't have to re-align the bolts for each one. I then used my belt sander with the drill running as well to reshape the bolt heads. This kept the shape of all the head fairly consistent.
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Here is the windshield frame with a coat of paint on it ready for re-assembly and eventually new glass and rubber seal.
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And here is the dash all painted and ready for re-assembly. The bigger parts got a couple of coats of epoxy primer and a skim coat of body filler in the corner of the dash where I repaired the rust in the upper right corner. Then every thing got a couple of coats of Rustolleum satin black to match what I used on the rest of the inside window garnish moldings.
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All put back together and ready to put back in the car. While I had it all apart I bench tested the speedometer and it seems to work fine. I also checked the gas gauge and that should work as well with a voltage reducer to 6 volts and the proper sending unit. For oil, water, and voltmeter I have a cheap set of gauges that can mount under the dash.
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And finally back in the car. Next I will be working on getting a steering column set up. I have a 78 Camaro tilt column that I bought at a swap meet probably 20 plus years ago so I will need to get that out of the attic to see if I can make work ok.
Brian

[Custer55]

I got all my pictures to load now and I know what the issue was. Still kind of a pain compared to what it was but doable.
All up to date for now
Brian

[567chevys]

Good Morning Brian ,

Thanks for posting all of your work on the 39 , I really like how you are going about it and trying to show all how its done .
also thanks for keep trying to post stuff , I know its not easy but the old program was no Longer being supported so lots of scammers where getting in and posting garbage.
Ian is one of the best web guys he can fixed any thing so when you have a problem please post problem & we will look at it and get it fixed
Have a great day & Be safe

Sid