With all the work being done on the Dodge and the available tech, it was obvious that we would upgrade the headlights on the car. For those of you who don't know, older cars such as these used sealed beam round headlights that were halogen and not really bright compared to modern day headlights. Of course the aftermarket always comes through and takes care of us. In this case, that aftermarket has provided an upgrade to the sealed beam headlights, which is a headlight shell that accommodates H4 bulbs. We did this upgrade on the 69 Mustang a couple years ago with great success so we decided to do the same to all of the older vehicles that use sealed beam headlights. The headlight housings we picked up for this vehicle were of the type where the lens mimics the old style sealed beams. We found housings that had diamond pattern lenses and other new age designs that would've looked tacky on an old vehicle like this. It's nice to just keep things original looking, since people will know these are not stock headlights soon as they come on.
I started off with a pair of the housings since I didn't want to spend too much in one shot getting two pairs to accommodate the four headlights on the car. I still had to get the LED H4 bulbs to put in these housings as well so that would've further added to the total cost for four lights. The two lights I'm putting in were going to be for both the low beam and high beam. I rewired the car so that the lights would only come on when the ignition is on so even when the switch is left on, the lights will go off when the key is off. I also had to rewire the inner bulbs on each side to serve as the high beam only bulbs, where both low and high beam lines are wired together so only when the high beams get power will the entire bulb come on. Installing these housings and their associated bulbs was rather easy. Since the plugs were already wired up, it was just a matter of inserting the bulbs into the housing, snapping the retaining clips in place to hold the bulbs in their housings then just place them in the headlight buckets, securing them with their associated headlight rings. The rings have three slotted screw holes that help hole the ring in place around the headlight. With the two bulbs in place and their respective headlight rings holding everything together, it was time to test everything out. As usual, these LED's impressed me soon as we turned them on. They lit up the wall nicely and when the high beams were turned on, damn! The wall was brightly lit by just the two lights. I can't even begin to imagine how bright that'll be when all four headlights are in on high. That little quartet will be blinding. But regardless of that, once I get all four lights in, that will check another box on the list of things to do on the Dodge to get it fully ready to hit the road. All that's really left to do on the Dodge now before I can be confident enough to say "let's hit the road", are the door panels, which I started working on; replacing the wiper motor with a fresh unit, despite the old one still working, albeit weak; the radiator needs replacing due to some small leaks in the core that will have coolant leaked out in a few days, and will probably spray out under the temps and pressure of coolant at regular operating temperature; and I have to troubleshoot and fix the charging issue on the car. These are all minor things that will get done rather fast, its just a matter of getting the things I need to finish these tasks and finally put the car on the road once and for all.
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