I thought some of you might be interested to see my new headlights. I, like many, never liked the look of the original 7" lamps. I suppose when Tjaarda came up with the shape of the Pantera, Alejandro's boys just had to find a lamp that would fit.
The Countach, Boxer and Esprit all had wide headlight pods, so they could use twin 4" lamps, and always looked nice with them up.
Doing away with the pop up head lights altogether was not an option. These are a feature of the Pantera and belong.
I don't like carrying around unnecessary weight, but draw the line at removing them entirely.
When I restored my car a few years ago, I decided that the headlight buckets must not let the rest of the car down in terms of fit and finish. I hate nothing more than seeing a beautiful Pantera let down by poorly fitting headlight buckets.
After studying the design of the original, I realised I would never be able to get them to fit perfectly. So I cut the top off one with the intention of making it independently adjustable. After looking at it for a while I decided it would be easier to make completely new headlight buckets from scratch.
At the same time I sourced some rectangular motorcycle lamp units as I felt that these looked good.
I therefore knocked up some new buckets from 18 and 20 gauge sheet metal. I then beat the top out on a sand bag to get the convex shape - this was before I built my wheeling machine. I then added small adjustable pedestals to hold the tops in place. With this, I could bolt the bucket into the car, and then adjust the top forward or back, side to side and each corner up or down independently from the bucket. It was very satisfying being able to adjust them to perfection without any of the frustrating nonsense of the original rubbish that came out!
Fast forward 6 years, and I was ready to rethink the headlights. Quite a few people had already done the twin 90mm Hella conversion, and with great success. (I was Particularly impressed with Larry Wu's Honda S2000 lights on the black GT5). I spent some time studying the market to see what was available and came to the conclusion that the 90mm Hella is, indeed, the best available. At Le Mans last year, I had a close look at the LMP cars in the pits. I was interested to see about 7 out of 10 cars were running the twin 90mm Hella's. But unlike a road car, they had no dip beam, just 4 HID (high intensity xenon gas discharge) high beam lamps. This was all I needed to know. Now I just had to find some...
The new price for these lights from Hella is approx $550 each! Exactly the same lamp in halogen is approx $70 .
I did not want halogen though - I had to have HID. So I just waited until some used ones came along cheap.
For those of you who are not familiar with HID lights, this is how they work: The bulb does not have a filament. It creates an arc, a bit like a welder. This requires 23,000 volts to work. So each lamp has a ballast box, which is basically a transformer that boosts 12V to 23,000V.
The industry says these lamps put out 3 times a much light as a 55W halogen, but only use 35W, and so create less heat.
The reason I say this is because mine are rather close to the top of the headlight pod.
OK - I have 4 HID lamps, and a Christmas break. Guess where I went for my holiday? Yes, to my workshop...
I pulled the headlight buckets out of the car, and removed the tops. I then cut the front out and made a new face that would except the 90mm lamps. I also widened the buckets by 5mm. I found I needed all the room I could get just to fit the lights in.
These units do not fit into a Pantera headlight bucket without a lot of modification. I therefore cut off all the original adjusters and made new ones of a much more compact design. It was important to me to get the lamps as high in the bucket as possible, thus creating that sleek look. I then cut out lots of holes in the bucket with a hole saw and flanged the edges. This technique makes them lighter and stronger. I mounted the ballast boxes (one for each lamp) on the little bulkhead panels behind the headlight lifter bar. After trial fitting the buckets a few times and making adjustments, I then painted them in satin black.
Something else I wanted to accomplish with this project was to stop the headlights jumping around when the car hits a bump in the road. I noticed someone had come up with a great idea on Mike Daily's "Pantera Place" website about making a little adjustable mechanical stop for the headlight ratchet mechanism to press against in its up position.
So I made my own version of this, but in a different location as my lights rise up less than 4". If you have never done this, pop your lights up and see how much you can rock the bucket up and down as it takes up the play in the mechanism.
Now I had eliminated all the play in the mechanism, but it was still possible to flex the front of the bucket up and down. This was not good enough. Not only would it look bad with the lights bouncing around, but it would also be very annoying for any car in front, having to put up with this in their rear view mirror... I guess it could potentially trigger epilepsy with the intensely white HID light and strobe effect!
Most of the flexing was in my bucket design, but some of it was also in the headlight bar, especially on the right side where it was acting like a torsion bar. My buckets flex because they have a removable top, therefore it's not a complete box. To fix this I welded in some little bracing bars. I found that 3/16th steel brake pipe was perfect. This transformed the bucket into a very rigid structure. I then added an arm that would stick out of the front corner of each bucket - this would then make contact with an adjustable rubber stop mounted on one of the bolts that would originally have held the Ralph Nader bumper in place, had my car been sold new in the USA.
After trial fitting the buckets over and over and making adjustments, I can now say my headlights are rock solid, with no flexing. I have since learned from Mike Drew, that some of the early push button cars had a similar mechanical stop at the front of the headlight bucket. Why did they ever do away with it?
Testing: Well, I can't drive it because there is salt on the roads. But I have backed it out of the workshop at night and driven it up the lane. The light output is simply unbelievable. Good enough for 240 MPH Le Mans cars - good enough for me!
Almost all modern cars that feature HID lights only have them on low beam - they use halogen for the high beam. To have HID on both is as good as it gets. Anyone who has bought twin halogen 90mm Hella kits from my friends Kirk Evans (Amerisport) or Ted Mitchell (Vader Racing) can convert them to HID at a later date. The lamp units are exactly the same design, but use a different bulb holder. My bulbs are DS2 (HID), the halogen bulbs are H7(Europe) or H9 (USA). All halogen bulbs are now available in HID. But of course require the same ballast box to run. Be aware that these Hella 90mm lamp units come in different types. The European lamps have a different beam pattern to the American versions to satisfy the different laws.
Next time you hear someone say that Kirk or Ted's headlight kit is expensive, believe me they are not.
If you want to stick with your original 7" lamps, there is some good news. (1) You can now buy kits to convert them to HID. The H4 HID bulb has a little solenoid actuated shroud that pops in and out to go from low beam to high beam.
(2) Claude DuBois told Mike Drew that the Group 4 cars he used to drive at Le Mans in the early 70's had less front end lift on the Mulsanne Straight with the headlights up!
Johnny
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