It all started a few months back when I thought I’d take a rainy weekend and do the conversion – I’d helped Will last year with the conversion on his car, and since the cutting of the buckets was done in no time, I figured I was trained and knew what I was doing - it should be quick and painless right? ... it was neither – but no fault to Kirk’s kit, it was my buckets that were not exactly stock.
At some point in the car’s history, someone had converted it to take rectangular lights, and while I thought they looked okay, they were not very bright - exceptionally dim in fact - the trim bezel wasn’t exactly square on them, and there was exactly ZERO adjustment on them, they put a couple of puddles of light 20 feet in front of the car and that was it. I’d always thought that kerosene lamps would have done a better job!
Anyway, out came the old lights and I started cutting at the buckets following Kirk’s template, but faced the first hurdle immediately – to get the rectangular bulbs to sit properly, someone had welded a rectangular bucket inside. That meant lots of extra metal and weld to cut through, probably 3-4 times the material , so I was going through cutting wheels (the expensive reinforced ones) faster than I’d expected - so a few times during the project I found myself out buying extra wheels.
Hurdle 2 came when I realized that the lip on the bottom of the bucket had been removed and then re-welded much higher on the bucket so that it could sit flush with the opening when the lights were up ... so more metal and weld and filler had to be cut off (and then ground down flush so the new headlight bezel would sit properly).
Once the buckets were modified to accept the lights and bezels, I wisely decided to do a test fit before painting ... of course, fitting was the last thing these buckets had in mind!!! I stared at it for a moment and then realized that in order for the rectangular lights to ride perpendicular to the road when the bucket is now opening about 2” less than it did before, they had to adjust the face of the bucket by kicking out the bottom almost 1.5" and welding in yet more material! Now I had to undo that historic modification as well. --- During all of this, I was losing the car season, so at one point the car was buttoned back up and I went out and enjoyed it while the days were still long enough to be able to get home before dusk. But then the time came to pull out the buckets again and get back to it --- So more cutting through the multiple layers of added steel and welds were needed, then the face of the bucket was bent back to where it should be, and the whole thing welded back up ... Special thanks to Sam for welding it for me one Friday morning.
I then spent a weekend grinding/smoothing the welds, filling and then repainting the buckets so I’d at least be able to enjoy a few weeks of driving ... they’ll come out again while the car is in storage for the winter so I can blend the bucket to the bezels (extra metal and filler were on the outside of the buckets as well as the inside, meaning the bezel doesn’t sit as flush as it would with stock buckets, so I still need to work on making it look ‘right’), and then paint the bezels to match the buckets.
I must say though, that I’m happy with the lights. Output is far superior than what I had - I was out late last night and, driving home in the dark, I found I could actually see more than 20 feet in front of me! I'm looking forward to completing the fit/finish to match the parts, but even without final finish, I'm pleased with the results ...
