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.
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.
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.
Brian Hobaugh SCCA National Tour June 2014
First Hemi 'Cuda Convertible Ever Built
Short clips: Goodguys Pleasanton autocross and pit videos
Hybrid Mode
