Electric Headlight Door Conversion

Cougar Community Classic Cougar Maintenance Restoration and Repair
1

Okay, I am starting this thread now even though I won’t get the project done for about a month when I get home.

Today I ordered:

Rocketman’s HRKP-A - Headlight Relay Kit with electric motor control for 67-68 (dual motor) models

Ford Probe headlight door motors from rock auto . com

and

http://www.electronickits.com/kit/complete/motor/CKMX066.htm

Those last items are PWM motor speed controllers going into sealed boxes along side the relay boxes. They will be the little black boxes that let me vary the speed that the headlight doors open and close so I can custom tailor it to my taste. I don’t want anything on the car too look too fast or jerky, except the acceleration of the whole car. I want the tail lights and headlight doors to be slow and casual like I think they should look. I ordered the 30 amp versions just to be safe, and they will generate less heat in the sealed box.

So, coming soon will be the full write up on the install and how it all works.

A guy at work who flies the ROV’s pointed out that with the PWM boxes, I could add in remote triggers and make the car open its eyes and even wink at a cute girl as she walks by. :smiley:

This could get out of hand, lol.

2

Wow, you’re going all-out with the conversion! The RKTMN’s HRKP-A is easy breezy on the install, tho I haven’t gotten around to the motors, yet. Will be following this!

3

I like the whole idea, especially the speed controllers. I think they should be slow like the vacuum openers. Take Plenty of pictures.
Steven

4

I have a '67 Thunderbird and I’m really interested in seeing how this turns out.

5

If you do a search of YouTube there are some headlight conversions for Cougars. I wouldn’t think it would be hard to adapt a T Bird to this type of set up. The most common conversion uses the Ford Probe motors. Here is a link from another topic on this subject.
Steven

http://www.classiccougarcommunity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=566&hilit=Electric+headlight+conversion&start=0

6

Work on the headlights will be coming soon.

I had a “minor” project pop up that entails changing every wall in my shed one at a time while putting in temp bracing for the roof rafters due to termite damage. While I am doing that, I am adding big beams to open up a wall and putting (2) 5ft wide swing out doors so the car fit in the shed that will now be a garage. It started with buying some shelves to clean up the shed.

That will be all be documented in a topic I will type up when it is all done and all the pics are online.

7

Sounds like you are getting ready to do, what I had to do, to my 20 x 24 garage 15 years ago. Termites had eaten the bottom plate and each wall stud to approx 3 ft. up. Had to jack the walls up 1/2" with screw jacks and 4 x4’s, working a 10-12 ft. section at a time. Had to then cut 4 ft. from each stud, install new bottom plate… over the anchor bolts, splice and nail cripple studs to every wall stud…all the way around. Corners and back wall were…entertaining. The project was an emotional rollercoaster,…sweating, cursing and several moments of shear terror when the entire structure shifted…and me in the middle of it all, “quick get the chains and come-a-long!” All said and done the garage was rock solid,…me…not so much.

8

Gotta love re-builds. Father-in-law and I did that with the lake cabin about ten years ago now…bottle jacks and some nifty crutches he came up with to lift the roof. Remove/replace termited wood. And a lot of that sweating/cursing/fear o death stuff…

9

Did Fordblue’s process ever get posted?

10

I sell and fabricate complete kits. I list some on eBay, but prefer to sell through email to cut eBay costs. I make them so they can open slooooow, also they are adjustable and can help reduce or eliminate headlight door sag. This is a complete kit, including hardware, electrical and directions, nothing else to buy. Ask for more info. catheadlights@hotmail.com. :ugeek:

coming soon…69/70 cougar kits

11

Its on the list if of things to get to while I am home this time. I am finally caught up on lawn care, other people’s car repairs, house cleaning, etc, ect, etc. I just need to get out to the scrap yard and get some steel to start making my brackets.

I did buy an oxy/acetylene rig when I got home that I needed to do some tractor repairs, so that opens up plenty of new projects I can take on without battling the band saw and jig saw.

Progress soon to posted.

12

I bought the electric conversion kit, but I can’t get the bloody bolt out that holds the vacuum actuators in! The nut is off, but the bolt is being stubborn. Anyone had this issue before? How did you resolve it?

13

Are you able to put a slightly smaller in diameter bolt through the other side and tap the stubborn one out with it?

14

I have taken several of these apart. Hit the bolt with some wd40. Don’t hit the threaded end with a hammer, they can bend over and complicate your life. Ask me how I know…Then I tap them out with a straight pin punch. Start with one that is too big to go through the hole until the pin is flush. Then drop down to a pin punch that will go through and knock the pin all the way out.
http://www.harborfreight.com/catalogsearch/result?q=pin+punch

15

Yeah! That’s basically what I meant but allot more descriptive. LOL!!

16

I am going to start on this project tomorrow after I go and get my oxy/acetylene rig refilled to start cutting plate and make the brackets.

I have been working on house stuff and recently picked up a little Ford compact tractor and bush hog with a locked up diesel motor. Got it running after honing the cylinders, all new rings, one new piston, cleaned injectors, and a cleaned injection pump. All said and done, I am into the tractor and bushhog for under $1000, purchase price included, and the bush hog alone is a $1000 unit.

Once that was done, I have been reclaiming 4 acres of overgrown wooded area that my parents own.

I also just finished rebuilding the injection pump on a Case 580C backhoe that we use to yank what the bush hog can’t cut.

However with the recent rain, the land is a big mud puddle, so I have time to work on the car again.

I was going to take the Cougar out today to run my errands, but as soon as I tried to start it, the ignition switch fell apart where the body is crimped together. Got that all sorted out, so I am taking it tomorrow to the welding shop. At lease its only a small bottle of oxygen that will be in the trunk, lol.

17

Today I got started on the headlights.

Step one was to make the bracket. I went to my brothers house and found some 1/8" aluminum plate so I used that.

All I used was a drill press, cordless circular saw, right angle grinder and hand files. Besides having an a mig machine set up for aluminum, no other fancy tooling is needed to make extreme precision pieces. Even with my slots not being perfectly straight, everything bolted up fine as you can see in the following pics. I used a tape measure and square as my layout tools. I would scribe lines along the whole piece and then center punch where I had to drill holes along the lines that would need to be connected to make the slots. The plate was cut with the corldless circular saw with a plain carbide tooth blade in it.

3 of the slots are where the bolts mount the motor to the bracket. The 4th slot is where an indexing pin on the motor fits.

After that was all bolted up, I installed the circuit breaker provided with the relay kit using an already existing hole from the previous owner’s ghetto battery hold down anchor. AKA conduit anchor and a bungee cord…

Then I decided to wire everything up temporarily to make sure things worked before bolting them in and finding out something had to be yanked back out.
Good thing I did as I have one bad motor. The relay kit with the motor controller installed worked exactly as described. I hooked up the one good motor to both sides and it worked fine turning the headlights on an off.

Then the mosquitoes came out and ran me inside so I am done for the day.

If anyone has a picture of where they have mounted the headlight relay boxes, please add it here. From what I can see, the back side of the headlight assembly is the best place given the length of wiring on the box. However, where I want to put it, the box is in a bind against the horn wiring connector.

18

More progress today:

Is it a good or bad thing that I can have my car to this point after 30 minutes?




All of the following work is being done on the passenger side headlight while I wait for a replacement motor for the drivers side.

I decided pulling the whole headlight assembly out would make this a lot easier to work on if it was sitting on the work bench.

Once it was out, the vacuum motor came out and you can see the two bolt holes that the new bracket will mount to. The larger hole that the vacuum hose used to go through will have a larger fender washer on it.




First issue that came up was that the motor on the actuator would hit the headlight door as it rolled back to open. The solution was to leave the lower most bolt in the bracket going to the actuator, then roll it back as far as it could go, which is hitting the back of the headlight frame assembly, then re-drill the other 2 bolts to mount the actuator clocked more towards the back of the car. Now the headlight door has full range of movement again.

Here the the pictures of how the bracket mounts to the bottom of the headlight assembly:

This picture is if you are looking at the headlight frame head on from the front of the car and the actuator is pointing up.

Here is the view from underneath:




Lastly for today, I did some horn relocation and mounted the relay and control box.

I had to grind the drill section of the self tapping screws off so the headlight door spring didn’t catch on them while moving around.

Doing a rough fit up, the horn should fit behind the little valence between the bumper and the grill. If anything hits, I can clock the horn around to make some room.
The wire for the controller going to the actuator is run through the old horn fastener hole for now just to keep it out of the way.

Also my speed controllers should fit right next to the relay box on the angled section, just under the large hole in the framework.

Thus far, nothing has been done that can’t be undone with a little mig welding to fill in drill bit holes.

19

Here’s another option for mounting Rocketman’s relay set-up

small relay is for fog lights

The relay box will be eventually held in place with a metal band and self tapping screw once the headlight motors are in and working

20

My only worry about that is water intrusion into the box. Around here we get sideways rain quite often, so that compounding with rain being forced around the bumper while driving might lead to issues. That’s why I have mine mounted with the holes for the wires pointing down.