TOG's new lights

That's going to look very nice. Are the existing headlights combined dip and main beam three pin H4 bulbs? If so probably best to make up a pair of adapters to connect to the new blingatronic units. Unusually for this forum I'm not too far away to offer assistance. Let me know if you need anything.

Hi Roadie thanks for offering to help, that's very much appreciated 👍
The lights came with a modified loom so with a bit of luck they might be relatively straightforward to connect. (They'll need to be for me to cope with the task 😉)

Here we go then.

Before.....



After...





I'm very pleased with the results.
A big thankyou goes to Jeff (Jeff-jthspace), Ian (RS) and Paul(Roadie) for their help and guidance. Couldn't have done it without you guys, 

Wow. That looks amazing. The whole car looks lower, wider and more balanced. Love it, love it, love it.

With the separate sidelights and indicators it looks like it should always have been that way.

I think you once said you were going for the 'cafe racer' look.

Nailed it.

Well done Guy, it's totally transformed the look of your car, and you've achieved the look you were after. 

Bit of an odd one that....

There are 2 fuses, one, for the left hand light and one for the right, I'd check them first (remove the fuse and check the continuity with a meter).

Then I'd check for a live feed at the plug for the bulb, from then on, I'd start checking the wiring back through to the original vehicle wiring.

If possible, unplug the whole of the new lights and plug in a couple of the old bulbs to the OE wiring to see if it all works properly as it did before

Sorry, I can't be more of a help, it's a shame that you're some distance away from me as I'd be round to help you out ! 

Good morning all.

I wonder if I might share another lighting project with you? 

Following on from the front lights it has always been my ambition to modify the rear lights in a similar manner. I recognise that this might not be to everyone's taste but in my continuing quest to make TOG look older than she is I hoped to replace the original lights with somethign more period. 

I had been looking for a suitable cup to mount the lenses using the technique I applied when I mounted the sidelights and indicators in the front bumper a while ago. In the end I went the custom 3D printing route with the help of Luke at Formotiv
Between us we designed three cups to hold the new lamps. 



It was then a case of cutting holes into the existing light units to accept the cups.




I had asked Luke to make the 3D prints over sized so that I could position them where I wanted and then remove any excess material. 
Luke was happy to create the complex, compound shape of the cup lip in 3D but that would have meant me having to position the cup exactly where the shape required. Probably beyond my skill level. Doing things this way built in a little wiggle room to account for any ineptitude on my part. 

I used a dremel type tool with cutting and sanding attachments to work away at the openings until I got close to the shape I needed. You can see in the first image where Luke had included surface texture for adhesion and vertical lines for orientation purposes. These helped me line up the cups with the thrust line of the car. I opted to fit the smallest of the cups first and positioned it as close to the inside edge of the OE lens as I could as it looked as though fitting all three lamps into the cluster would be a squeeze. The shape of the OE lens is at it's flattest at this point so the cup was the shallowest. 
Eventually, after a bit of work I got things to fit and moved on to the next cup. This time I plumped for the largest of the three which would fit at the outermost edge of the OE lens. This one required the most work. Since I hoped to retain the existing mounting points of the OE light I was moderatley constrained by that. This meant I had to fit the cup in as far out as I could without destroying those mounting lugs.



Alot of material was removed at the back of the light to allow the new cup to sit in the required position. I have reinforced the resultant structure with fibreglass body filler to regain some strength. 



Then it was simply a matter of rinse and repeat. Time consuming work but quite rewarding. What was a challenge was mirroring things onto the other cluster as measuring over compound curves is tough. 



You can see how deep this cup is. Alot of excess material was removed and the end result resembles a torpedo tube on a WWII submarine....
For the third and final cup I marked out the middle of the distance between the other two cups and drew lines between their extremities. This defined the position for the middle cup.



By coincidence the lamps and reflector that I chose all increase in diameter by similar steps so things worked out quite symmetrically.



The holes in the base of each cup are to allow for the bulb holders of the new lamps.

With the cups glued in I prepped the plastic surface for paint. My local factors suggested using an adhesion promoter plus a plastic primer. I took their advice and used whizz cans to paint the clusters.






The colour's not perfect from a spray can but it's passable. 



Lastly, it was time to fit the lamps.....





It definitely looks different and will take a little getting used to but I like it. 
I've put up a short video on YouTube to show the lights in action. 



Have a smashing day everyone,

Cheers,

Guy