Aftermarket Headlight Buckets - POS....

[Junior2561 10]

I purchased the A/M headlight buckets from CJs and am i getting beat on. Studs are crooked, one side kind of fits, the other does not...the driver's side is waaaaay off. I will get pictures tonight.

 

Anyways - anyone else run into this?

[BuckeyeDemon 211]

I purchased the A/M headlight buckets from CJs and am i getting beat on. Studs are crooked, one side kind of fits, the other does not...the driver's side is waaaaay off. I will get pictures tonight.

 

Anyways - anyone else run into this?

 

my originals didn't fit very well if that makes you feel any better.

 

however, i'm sure others would have said the fit was great and i'm sure others would say the fit after my bodywork sucked.

[Cruzzar 22]

I know there are many people that like the '69 models with the 4 headlights but I've always wanted a '70 and finially found one. One thing that I noticed on a lot of the '70s is that the trim piece on the leading edge of the hood typically did not align with the trim pieces that surround the headlights. In looking at a number of '69s I noticed that the curvature of the hood next to the headlight extensions match up better than those on a 70. I don't know if when Ford made the headlight extensions for the 70 that they put too much curvature in the extension because a lot of hoods don't seem to match the curve of the 70's extensions while they do on the 69's. I did not want to do a lot of work on my car and when done have a misaligned hood trim and headlight extension so here is what I did to make them match. To get the hood's curve to match the headlight extensions I had to make a releif cut with a die grinder into the bottom of the hood's frame, pulled it together and rewelded it giving the hood more curvature. This made the hood's profile parallel to the extension and also allowed the trim pieces to line up. I also went to the extent of drilling out some of the spotwelds on the front of each fender and repositioned the fender to match the extensions' shape (some of my friends think I am a little eccentric). These were stock fenders and stock extensions and they originally did not fit at all. Sometimes you have to put in a lot of work to get sheetmetal on these older cars to fit like they should have when they were made. I have lost the pics of the relief cut on the bottom of the hood but here is some pics of the headlight bucket on the fender before painting and some pics of the finished hood/extensions.

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

Edited January 24, 2012 by Cruzzar

[LindenBruce 27]

You know Junior, I see original used extensions on eBay all the time. That might be something to think about. Or tweaking your sheet metal like Cruzzar and many others did. Bruce

[Fordrevhead 29]

Cruzzar, that looks great! ...I can see myself doing that... Boy, I have a lot of work left, lol.

[Junior2561 10]

I am watching a few on eBay right now but here are some pictures i took at 5am this morning.

 

If worse comes to worse, I can put some time into these ones and they will look like originals. I was just really hoping they would fit right up.

Sorry for the blurry pics...

 

 

You can see where they meet the fender tops, they are not flush

 

this is the driver's side and it is the worst.

 

passenger side i can make it work with some time and materials

[PaleRider 12]

Unfortunate;ly just like every other repro part - little tweaking in order.

[69RavenConv 286]

Just a thought, but assuming your fenders are repops, too, they may be part of the problem. That being said, my original buckets mated up pretty well to repop fenders.

[buening 63]

Wow, that is way off.

 

The trick with buying used ones is finding one with the valance mounting tabs still intact! I agree that the OEM ones and the eyebrow moldings don't mesh too well without some work.