I picked up a couple of these 100w spot lights to replace the old driving lights. I dont really like the mounting setup, it does not also for much adjustment in the aiming of the lights and there really isn't anywhere solid enough to mount the bolts. The housing is also a little deep and hits the old mounting brackets for the original lights but those brackets appear to be welded to the bumper so I don't really want to cut them off. Car manufacturers that use plastic lenses should be shot. Rust is lovely. Out of the 5 lights I have only 1 isn't rusted. So I'm not going to use the original back half of the light I'll make a new mount for it and just use the front bezel and glass. A few pieces of wood A couple of metal plates and some bolts. The bolts will allow me to adjust the angle of the light at all 4 corners. A bit of overkill but it was just as easy as making 2 pivot points and having 2 adjustment screws like headlights. For the plate on the left (driving light backing cover) the nut will be slightly loosened so the bolt is free to rotate and then I will tack weld the nut to the bolt. Eack corner will get a bolt and a nut that will be free to rotate but still relatively tight. The plate on the right (chassis mounting plate) will get a nut tacked over each of its 4 holes that will receive the 4 bolts from the other plate. So off to the hardware store tommorrow for some varethane to seal the wood so it doesn't absorb moisture and expand and hopefully they'll be ready for thursday nights highway journey. Once the varethane has dried I'll silicone the wood rings into the light bezel and the light backing plate and wood ring allready have 4 holes drilled so I can attach them together. Just have to figure out exactly how I'm going to mount the chassis mounting plate to the old driving light bracket and drill a hole in the light backing plate for the wires and solder on the all trac plugs
Figured out how I could mount the new lights to the old brackets and made a design change which eliminates the 4th adjusting bolt which is a better design and saves materials. Got all the bolts and washers welded on :roll: and I have test assembled one unit A final test fit of the unit A little bit of primer and off to bake in my custom paint baking booth :lol:
A coat of flat black I like to solder whenever I can and even if I can't solder the connection I will still solder the end of the wire before I put it in the connector and crimp it. When I crimp it I squeeze the fuck out of it with a big pair of vise grips. Got the wood rings mounted now with liberal amounts of silicone to glue them in place. Tommorrow I'll be able to do final assembly and then install and test them out.
Thats some nice work there. Aren't you worried about the wood rotting though? I'm suprised you didn't fiberglass the the rings to try to protect them from the elements.
I used exterior varethane on the wood which is pretty much a liquid plastic so hopefully that will seal it. Then I primed them and painted them so they'll last a while at least. If I had it to do again I may try to find a piece of ABS drain pipe to use.
Well there were a couple of things I wasn't happy with. The first being the adjustment mechanism was all metal so it was going to rust and seize up pretty quickly so I made some new backing plates and used some nylon nuts instead. I really really really like these things. Toyota uses them in alot of places and it really makes getting 20 year old bolts off alot easier. I get mine at NAPA. I also brought out my glasses and used much better lighting when I welded the bolts onto these plates. The other thing I was not happy with is the fact that useing the stock Toyota driving light switch the only time the driving lights come on is with the low beams on. Turn the high beams on the driving lights shut off. If you just have running lights on and no headlights on the driving lights wont come on. So the driving light switch or relay must get its power from the low beam power supply that is sent to the headlights when the low beams are switched on. I would like to be able to turn my driving lights on at any time I choose so I can use them as day time running lights and in some cases where it is snowing real heavy at night I can see the road better without headlights so I would like to have the driving lights on then as they are much lower and will not reflect as much off the falling snow. So it's either all new switch and wiring or a new 12v supply to the switch or relay depending on where the low beams send their power to.
