Ok, so I polished up the headlights on the 87 Cougar, and they look real nice :D :confused: . My question is, there is alot of condensation on the inside, what is a good way to remove and prevent this??
I remember reading somewhere about how to pry apart the housing and reseal it after polishing the inside. It may have been on the old or board or another forum... That's probably not much help. I'll see if I can find it again.
You pry the lense off using a flat head screwdriver or putty knife. Then clean and dry the inside of the lense and reflector. There is a clear lense adhesive/sealer from Permatex that you can get to put the lense back on and seal.
Thanks! :D
hell, i didnt even do that
i brough the lights in the house, and once they dried, i took some silicone based sealant, and ran a bead around the lights where they join the bucket and lens, and use my finger to press as much into the gaps as i could, and let that cure over night, then ran another bead over top of that, let that cure, ran some electrical tape over the silicone bead, and they havnt leaked since, did that 1.5 years ago
Electrical tape stayed on for a year and a half? That stuff usually falls off right away for me.
I do what Shawn suggested, but use teflon tape to wrap the seam after I run the silicone bead around it(before it cures)
the e-tape fell off after a few months, but i put it on just so that the silicone could cure without shiznit picking at it like road debris
On the topic of headlights, anyone have any tips on the best way to wire up a headlight relay? I've been reading ways to do it from anything like the foglight guides over on some mustang forums to a guide written for our very own cars at turbotbird.com.
The one at turbotbird only seems to extend wire, not replace any with a thicker gauge. How's the wire thats currently in there if it goes to a relay on the fender instead of through the switch? I currently have ~1.5v drop between the battery and headlight which isn't too bad from what I've heard about other peoples' cars.
Planning on picking up the relays, fuses, wiring tomorrow evening to get going.
You could just build a nice, neat mini-harness out of thicker wire, with a few connectors, some new headlight sockets, and either find a backwards socket (can't solder to 9004 internals... I tried), or use some spade terminals plugged into one of the original sockets to trigger the relays. Here's one of many pics I have in my "headlight" folder:
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Summit Racing sells a harness for redoing your headlights with a relay. (shhh, it's made by apc)
the only 9004 harness I see is this one: http://store.summitracing.com/default.asp?target=partdetail.asp&autofilter=1&Ntt=headlight+harness&N=0&part=SUM%2D890030&autoview=sku&Ntk=KeywordSearch (same as the picture posted in this thread). Searching under "relay", none of the results come up with the correct bulb type. Should I just go the easy route and get it from them? Anyone know anything about the relays used or the wire gauge? Guess I'll just email them to find out. Should still be better than the oem setup.
http://www.danielsternlighting.com/
I was considering getting the kit from this guy and using my own (10ga.) wire.
I like that guy's site...and the prices aren't too bad. Where'd you hear about him from? Reputable?
http://www.lincolnsonline.com/article100.html
That's where I got it from. Reputable? Ask pro-five-oh. :p
hmm, now you guys have me curiouse. How would you do it for the 4-eyes? I dont ever recall anybody tlaking about those headlights... I noticed my pass. high had started to have some condensation inside of it... is is possible to tear those apart? (runs out the front door to tear apart the car :D )
Frank M
You don't have to tear them apart. The entire lamp is replaceable.
You could always convert your four-eye to use H4 halogen bulbs. There are kits available to do that.
No....just replace the entire unit on a 4-eye...they are sealed beam units.
Went with Summit's relay wiring and it just came in today (2 days for GROUND shipping). Got it all wired up/plugged in and my headlights are quite a bit brighter (can actually see them light up the road a little with streetlights overhead). Went up to 14.2v at both lights (with one having longer wiring - doesn't seem to affect the voltage any) with 14.38 at the battery.
Now to find 55/65w 9004's to make them similar to 9007's output
Is it hard/expensive to convert the 4 to H4 halogen. I have looked into it a little but dont know enough. Would it be more of a hassle to do than to just leave the stockers?