here's a chop I made but thats what they pretty much look like.

 

doh!

 

I like the pop up headlights just not the style. Square is boring as hell. I love some of the custom setups by the MR2 and Ford Probe guys where they have the duel circular style headlights combined with the sleepy eye mod like Deadbird. I have no idea how to go about doing either let alone together so im happy just having the lights work period.

 

Raif, you never did send me those pics of your ride. Still have my addy? Or would it it be easier to upload em yourself ?

 

Modding the light to lift only so high is the easiest part (87+ motors). Mine look unreasonably complex (pic below) due to the fact I mounted another cars lamp mount brackets within the 'bird OEM mount so, just in case I didn't like it, it could be returned to normal w/o having to hunt down new (j'yard) parts to revert the mod.....

If one were set in never turning back from a headlight mod.. a sawzall & some creative brackets could mount any lamp assembly desired in the pop-up. I have to design what I do with a certain amount of caution because of the rarity of f-bodies in the j/yards here.

 

i aslo would prefer to seee light under the plexi glass as common on alot of corvettes, but back to earlier no body thought of if you put yoru lights in the grill it would be difficult to get alot of air into your radiator seeing you dont have any sort of grill on the car, granted niether do the maros' but thats why thoses grilles are thier

 

how about my idéa? ...but good luck on finding lights and getting them to fit in there

 

And how exaclty do you go about it? Can you point me in the right direction please?

 

Any links to the kits they offer for those cars? I'm thinking of doing exactly that to my formula when I do the 91 nose conversion...

 

I'm interested as well.

I was going to do the conversion like Redraif did but grab the lights out of either a pre-97 2-door Grand Prix SE/GTP or a 2-door Cutlass Supreme. Those lights are expensive though! I've also noticed from driving around that the early Geo Storms used the same lights but with the parking/turn light separate, so it should require less modification into our cars. I have yet to get a chance to measure them up though.

However, I kinda like the idea of the sleepy eye thing and going with maybe two separate lights in there. I'm not a big fan of the dual-filament, sealed-beam setup.

 

Change your H3 fog's to the 90watt or 100watt H3 12v bulbs.

I had a GSP pull me over for driving with only fog lights and he said "Georgia law says you cant drive with only fog lights on", I simply replied "According to Ga law, when the bulbs were changed to above 90 watts, it would be illegal to call them fog lamps, therefore they are headlamp/drive lights."

his response........ "have a good night"....

I know the elevation is off, but I can see a lot better with two h3 100's than I could with sealed beams.

I am going to be designing a low, 2x4 1/2" headlight conversion with hyperwhite LED's that have both high and low beams and will fit into the spot where you guys are wanting the lights to be.

Didn't mean to jack the thread, but the LED conversion may be a way to go.

:::::: ==== ==== ::::::
^LEDs ^Turn ^turn ^LEDs

But I will also have a friend custom making a fiber hood to cover the old headlamp bays as well. This will be about a year process for me as I have many other mods to do that take a higher priority.

Hope this helps.

 

i completely agree with this, i've thought about this for a while. Dodge Stealths and 3000gt's have this conversion, as well as just coming stock with them, it looks really good, it just needs to be done right.

if i had the time, the money, or the know how, i'd definitly do it.
as it stands...they have it for 4th gens, i e-mail the creator of it but he said he didn't know of any for third gens, but i could find the site again, and u could probably modify it to fit...definitly would look good i guess...


that or just putting 2 smaller lights where the 1 BIG light sits in it, i believe 4th gens have that.

 

late model 4th gens (98+ birds) have the 4 headlights that are somewhat smaller. They're also composites, unlike ours and early 3rd gens, that are sealed beam bulbs. A set of smaller rectangular lights inside the thirdgen housing would be nice.

 

whoever gave that firebird rendering, thanx...since i had a little free time, this is kinda what i was thinkng. Pardon the bad image render, but i don't have photoshop right now, and had to use MS paint.

 

I wonder if that will give the light projection to the side of the vehicle a hard time for full-sight-span? be worth a try.

 

there'd be the potentail that it wouldn't however, how much area is covered up in a camaro, since the lights are recessed further back than the front bumper, or and the angle for it's side.

 

The only reason I abandoned the idea you are suggesting with the grand prix and cutless...the lights in dual form are wider than the headlight door...I thought this would look odd unless the headlight door was molded into the hood! This chopped notchback firebird, I believe empolyed the above idea... you can see how much wider the headlights are then our doors! the dead giveaway is the lack of gap b/w the turn signals and lights! This set up uses the same lights as the later 4th gen camaros, which also has a separate turnsignal!



more pics here!

 

There was a black bird that had a similar coversion to this with shoty finish work. Lost the pics with a disk failure...might be pics on a search have not had time to look though!

Ok found it...here is the thread...

the link is dead thought to the site...so unless someone here has the pics...the one here is it! The coverversion seems ok lit, but looked bad unlit. the buckets were painted yellow....

9th post down...jza posted the pic!

this is the dead link to the guys site...he is a memeber here...low post count...last post in 2003! jptaylor2 is the user name!
http://www.geocities.com/jptaylor2/FIREBIRD.html

 

what about something like this?

when closed, standard low-beam HID's are in place...

when you 'flip' on the brights... some solar flares pop out of the hood!

(forgive my spacing, as clearly the HIDs will take up a tad more room internally)

this way people can keep their pop-ups...(the only friggin reason to have a firebird,) and have some great lighting...

I would probably just do the H4 conversion to HID, and also convert my fogs to HID (just lower temp rating,) and screw any sort of conversion... but I like my popups, and when I didn't feel like raising them, my fog HIDs would be more than sufficient to light the road... and look pretty killer I might add...

with the conversion in the pic, you would normally just drive around with the doors closed, and only when you initiated brights, would the doors open, revealing the brightest damned lights in the world... (or something like that)

your thoughts are welcome.

 

just make sure the lowbeams kick off when u pop up the highs, cause if that's the case, then you'd be scaring 747's.

Anybody know how gm got past the "flash-to-pass" thing in europe with the firebirds? flash ur foggies?

 

yup, although that would be hilarious

what do you mean? how is it different in Europe?

btw I always flash my fogs instead of my highs.

 

The fog housing don't provide good light dispersion to be used as regular headlights. I don't care how bright the bulbs are you put in them they're not putting light in ALL the right areas.

I'm just mounting two sets of 90mm low/high beam headlights down there in the gaping holes.

 

I think it would be neat to have high/low bulbs in the fog location, that also get bright with the normal brights.... mmm the power of the sun.

 

I remember seeing a site of a guy that dremeled out his stock fog housing to fit 9006 bulbs in there for a dual low/high beam. Something to think about.

 

interesting... I'd probably just get some new housing... with two smaller enclosures... one for driving, and one for brights... so one would be aimed higher...

 

I was thinking about looking at the euro style light conversion they make for C5's and also there are some for other cars. My idea was to fab it up in place of the flipup part and then where the bumper is resesed for the turnsignal and headlight fill that in to look like a C4 and then down below the bumper inserts cut that out for the turnsignals. Or buy the later 3rd gen nose and then just graph in the lights. I think it looks sweet on vettes. Plus its a chance to have projector headlights. I think it could look badass or half assed depending on the quality of the work.

 

You say a cross-breed between the new C5, and a firebird?

so you'd be pulling out all the flip components...?

 

Yup and then make my own bracket for it and i would also shape the hood around the headlight so it look likes it came that way from the factory.

 

may be cheaper to just go out and buy a C5!

 

Why already have a Z06


and heres another

 

I bet that GTP is one fun car!

I think the way your bird looks is amazing... why mess with such beauty?

p.s. - what no fourth gen trans am ws6?

 

Almost got a 4th gen but bought the GTP instead now i have fun picking on unsuspecting local kids.

 

Well hell, pick up a fix head light conversion for the vette and see how hard it'd be to adapt it onto the bird with new housings.

 

The 87+ motor are limited by stops. Once the motor encounters resistance (binding, overload), the relay module cuts power to the motor.
Adding a new stop point will limit how far the lamps raise.
Hard to see but, the yellow circle is a piece of ½x½ alum angle screwed to the frame to limit the motor arm trave. The arm hits the stop, and thats how far the lamp raises...

 

Ok, so it is that easy then. Thank you

 

deadbird... are you going to ever put any plastic trim around your bulbs? Looks a tad bit 'rigged' from those pics...

I guess plastic trim wouldn't be necessary if you just put the light enclosures as high as possible, and raise the lamps as little as possible...

have you noticed ANY light differences between the original bulbs, and your smaller ones?

I wonder how some of those acura's work... they have a headlight the size of a maglight flashlight... and they are brighter than ours... that's not the same lighting principle as the h4 conversion, is it?

 

i'd say forget the plastic trim, as it's gonna look a little funny no matter what you do. Get some sheet aluminum, and start bending till you get a factory appearing shroud.

 

Well, I suppose it will looked pretty rigged during the build and alignment of it and truthfully... it is rigged since the lamps are from a different car.

The lamps work very well at night (for me at least) and have a nice, focused beam pattern. I'm not sure about other style lamps. I made mine to where the OEM lamps could be put back in if I had to (as in screwing this up badly). If f-bodies ran rampant in the boneyards here I'd just get a complete 'new' assy and make it completely different. But, I have to play my cars safe so all the original stuff can be used 'just in case'...

The trim bezel has to be modified alot to fit and should look alot like this when done...

 

with a light that small, you could almost not raise the headlamp doors at all! but again, you may have to modify it beyond your point-of-no-return.

 

That is the lamp from a GP, or camaro, olds. and a few other cars that use the same lamp. The same particular lamp is, interestingly enough, the size of the driving lamp... hmm.
If you notice, though, in the above pic.. the GP lamp is still somewhat larger than the turn signal lamp. Could you use it w/o having it pop-up.. yes. Will it shroud the lamp slightly, possibly hindering the effective road lighting pattern.. good chance of yes again.
Even if I were to dice my OEM brackets up.. it's still somewhat roguh to get driving lamps/odd sized lamps to still be adjustable like OEM. That was the one of the factors in the wat I did mine... I wanted to have 'factory' lamp adjustmanets as well as a somewhat custom look. I also like the pop-ups.. just not the semi-truck sized lamps the cars came with.

I did finally get the other trim bezel to finish the other side as well but, the 'bird is in a state of progress reversion currently..

 

is that an MSD digital 6 over there where the relays are normally located?

 

Exactly why I never used those lights in my style conversion. Just a bit too bit all around. So I opted for the closest dimensionaly rectangular style driving light, non yellow, to the space we have avail when the headlight doors are fully down!

 

It's a 6AL... the relays that previously resisded there are now in the front pass side corner mounted like the horns (on the opposidte side) which, are to be re-relocated once again but, they aren't moving very far.

 

I have two questions/ideas to add/ask here.
I like all of this brainstorming on headlight ideas.
One thing is, I saw some guys that had the reg. flip up assembly with a smaller light-unit....is there a way to make it so the headlight only flips up enough to reveal a smaller height headlight with the same width?

Second, has anyone ever seen or heard of converting the flip-ups into a nissan 300zx style headlamp?

Just curious!?

 

both of those have been covered... in this very thread...

people even listed what years are easy to limit the headlight travel range... just by puttin in some stoppers...

 

i was thinking about this for a while. when the headlight is not modified, the bar that strikes the bracket that causes the resistance to make the motor stop, is always at a position to kinda lock. at the top, it comes down slightly to ensure that it doesn't fall, and at the bottom, of course it's already down. it may be more work, but i think it would be safer to put a stopper under the bar and shorten the linking bar. that way it still comes back a little at the top, and at the bottom, it's at the bottom....when the motors get stripped inside, this will kinda help hold it in place until it gets fixed. what do you guys think about it....would it work??

 

anyone???

 

I guess I really don't understand what you're saying...

sorry.

 

the part circled in yellow. the small shiny goldish looking bar in the middle attached to the motor is what causes the resistance to stop the motor. when this part is not modified and the headlights are up, that bar points a little passed 12 o'clock towards 1 o'clock(looking at it from the fender side) this is what kinda locks it, holding the headlight up even if the motors are bad.

with the modified lights, stoppers are put in to keep this bar from going all the way to the top. if the motors go bad, the headlights will fall.

i was suggesting having the bar on the other side of the stopper (the upper side) and shortening the connecting bar (the dull colored one pointing up and down on the right side of the circle). this way, the headlights will only go up the same amount, will "lock" in place at the top, and will hit the stopper when the headlights are down. it is more work, but at least you can drive at night until you have time to fix bad motors. does that help???

 

it's not letting me bring in the pic...it's deadbirds pic further up this page...with the three arrows and two circles