Brendon's '67 Firebird thread

[Tuske427]

Thanks, Wayne!

Still plugging away on my wiring, ha ha ha... So I'll share some pics of my progress. For the most part- under the dash is done. (still have a few lights to wire in) I mounted the computer underneath the pass side of the dash along with the fuel pump relay. One day, if and when I put a HVAC system in this will all need to change. I have the wiring for the cluster all set, but I can't put that in until my replacement light socket arrives. This one little socket is the only piece I can think of so far that I have lost during the entire build of this car, which, is pretty good, actually.

In the engine bay I have the wiring harness mostly on the engine (minus the obvious not yet installed parts) and the wires mounted on the firewall. I also used an LT1 style junction block (in the far left corner, it's red, and barely in the pic). I really like these parts as they have a plastic cover helping to protect the metal and two posts for mounting wires. GM seemed to discontinue them on the LS cars. Not sure why... Still need to wire up the fans and lights. Speaking of which I picked up a set of tinted BMW style headlights. I'll have some fab work to do to get these to fit. I'm thinking I may need to pull the bumper back off to make this happen. These lights are deeper (especially the projectors). I'm hoping I can simply remove these and modify my firebird sockets/ plate and use this set up to mount the new lights. It would be best as this will locate them properly as opposed to trying to modify the BMW mounting assembly as that is way different and would take a lot of fab work to modify.

I also had some fun removing a plug on the passenger side head for installing a temp sender. Unfortunately, the plug was rounded so I ended up using these stripped bolt extractors I forgot I had. Worked awesome. I'm so glad I had them. I just tapped it on with a hammer and off it came. It wasn't even tapped on squarely... I'll recommend these from now on. I'm sold. Of course, once I did get this off the sender I have is the wrong size, so I'll need to get another one of these, ha ha.

[Tuske427]

This weekend I finished up my fuel line, and made some LED lights for my interior. I wanted to make a soft glow for under the footwell area in the interior. Not to be confused with christmas tree lighting seen in some tuner cars... This will be subtle so I added some resistors to weaken the LEDs. I also started working on blending the BMW headlights into my car. This has definitely been a project of learning what to do by doing everything wrong first. So much so that I've had to order a second pair of lights (a $300+ lesson)

It appeared that I had a choice of either adapting the BMW lights to my Firebird brackets/ assembly, or using the BMW assembly. I started with trying to use as much of the Firebird assembly as possible to ensure proper placement of the lights. This was the wrong approach. It didn't work and I made one of the lights unusable for the BMW assembly in the process.

So I started to adapt the BMW mounting to the Firebird backing plates that hold the lights. Fortunately I have (had) 2 sets of these because I measured wrong and ruined the first plate I started to modify. With the second plate I got the lights where they should go, and then made the passenger side even better (practice makes perfect..) After making the passenger side better I decided to remake my driver side again (a third time) as I realized the holes I had to make could be much smaller and retain more metal for structural support.

I also had to pull the bumper back off to remove material around the headlight areas to allow the new larger lights to fit. I can finish this project up after my second set of lights come in, hopefully next weekend. Stay tuned.

[Tuske427]

Normally I save my updates for Sunday night when I capture the entire weekend's worth of wrenching, but I was happy with the result today so I thought I'd share.

I finally got the headlights mounted in my car. What a job this was. I went through two full sets of these aftermarket BMW lights. Absolutely ruined every extra light in one way or another. Two sets of Firebird mounting brackets, and one Firebird headlight bucket (technically still usable, just lightweight now, ha ha)

I've included two pics of the before/ after of the plastic frame modification, as well as the modified mounting bracket in case anyone else is interested in trying this type of modification or just curious to see what it took. Tomorrow I'll work on wiring this and taking better pics of the car without the silly washer fluid bucket and blanket on the engine..

If anyone is curious- installing the projectors on the inside would have required rebuilding the bumper mounting brackets, at least with these lights. Also, keeping them on the outside retains the original lighting sequence.

[waynieZ]

Nice job they look like they were from the factory.

[Tuske427]

Thanks, Wayne! Of course, who knows where they are pointing right now, ha ha

[Tuske427]

Didn't finish the lighting wiring today, as I forgot that I needed to find out if the Ron Francis wiring system I have would provide sufficient power for these lights (I'm doubting it) or if I need to set up relays with power from the battery. So I reinstalled my horns, finished wiring the inside for now (the parking brake light isn't hooked up) and will call them tomorrow.

And I took some better pics of the car today...

[Chicken Louie]

Great work on the headlights!! Love the look