Fantastic work! 
-
-
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.
20240811_163325.jpg
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.
20240811_110956.jpg
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.
20240812_110049.jpg
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.
20240812_112118.jpg
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.
20240812_113429.jpg
After smoothing that out on the planishing hammer it has a good shape stated but still need more compared to my profile gauge.
20240812_114944.jpg
I then used my kick shrinker to bunch up the metal more on the outside edges.
20240812_115001.jpg
Next I hammered the center into my panel beater/sand bag to stretch the metal in the center to give it more shape.
20240812_143505.jpg
After a bunch of time on the planishing hammer it's looking much better.
Comment
-
Then I used my homemade compass to mark where the flange to fit in the adjuster needed to be.
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.
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.
And here is a view from the other side.
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.
I have a couple more pictures but I can't upload them for some reason.
Anyway 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.
BrianComment
-
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, BrianComment
-
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, DougComment
Comment