AMC Eagle Headlight Mod (LEDs part one)

When driving this thing home I was really bothered by how terrible the headlights were.  I could see a couple feet in front of me and that was it, whenever you go to pick up a new car and drive it home make sure to leave three hours earlier than you expect (and even then, it’ll get delayed so you have to drive home in the dark).  I’m declaring this upgrade a safety modification to compensate for the fact that I’m putting off rebuilding the carburetor.

The first thing I did was but all the parts:

3 stainless 2″ #8 phillips pan head sheet metal screws (Frentz and sons hardware store)

12 stainless 1.5″ #8 phillips pan head sheet metal screws (Frentz and sons hardware store)

Headlight harness (Ebay)

Headlights (Amazon)

Turn signals (Amazon)

Under-hood light (Amazon)

Epoxy primer (Amazon)

Dielectric grease (Amazon)

That’s the first lie, I didn’t buy all this first, but one bit at a time.  First I bought the headlights and some relays with pre-built connectors and pigtails.  Then I decided that I didn’t feel like wiring up all that myself and bought the kit (I’ll use the relays somewhere else).  I picked up a pile of each type of light I thought I’d need, I tried counting them but after losing count in the manual several times I just guessed and figured I’d either order more or use 12v LED lights somewhere else eventually.  The dielectric grease I ordered but picked up a tube at the auto parts store in the mean time and the primer I had from a previous endeavor in putting a bunch of effort into un-needed repairs.

torn down

To start I removed the headlight bezels, grill, headlights, turn signals, turn signal bulbs, the plastic cable control clips along the trim piece under the grill, and trimmed back the wire that runs to the un-used connectors (the middle bulbs and the driver’s side outside one).  To get the relays mounted I also removed the battery.  The Relays got sheet metal screwed to the plate just forward of the battery which is non-ideal, but that’s the length harness I had.  I sunk a sheet metal screw, fender washer, and two star washers to ground the passenger’s side bulbs.  I grounded the driver’s side bulbs to the screw that attaches the driver’s side quarter panel to the trim panel under the grill.

this was totally mandatory

Behind the grill was really oily and dirty, I cleaned it as best I could and even removed, sandblasted, and epoxy coated the two brackets that hold the grill up.  They were rusty, never again.  The screws I meticulously cleaned with denatured alcohol and a brass brush and re-used them because I couldn’t find stainless replacements locally.

as was this

I didn’t buy replacements for the screws that held the headlights in, but I did get ones for the trim (those got mangled coming out.  The #8 screws I bought had heads that were slightly too big, they worked, but if there were ones with slightly smaller heads than normal they would be perfect.  Of course they’re stainless, always buy stainless whenever possible.  I cleaned the turn signal housings meticulously because if I take it off the car and it’s annoying to handle, it should be easier the next time I take it off.  The wire got routed with sheet metal screws and plastic brackets that zip ties go through (so they’re re-usable).  The loom on the new harness was not split loom, but continuous so I couldn’t wrap the old harness in it unfortunately, but that’ll come another day.

Ah! my eyes!

I tried to get off the side marker lenses but I didn’t know where to pry so that I wouldn’t break it, that’ll come next.  The whole project took about three days of afternoons to do it meticulously.  I think I’ll call this a success, the outer bulbs have a dim mode (they all do, but the center ones aren’t wired for it) that only lights up the bottom of the three rows of LEDs and the center LED on the middle row, I’m not certain about the mods I’ve heard about that use diodes to change which bulbs fire on dim, I don’t know if I’ll need that or really why I’d do it.  The turn signals don’t work, but I have electronic flashers coming in right now that will hopefully fix that.  The under-hood light really could use a diffuser.  Right now the mosquitoes are out and I’m done for the day.

This was daylight-ish, the white balance just went nuts

The home page for this project is here, it has a link to the album of pictures.