Dingley

iTrader: (1)

after looking thru the electrical diagrams in the haynes manuals. the firebird and camaro headlight set ups are almost identical. the only difference is that the camaro has an extra hi-beam light. so, my idea is take the camaro harness and splice it into my firebird, completely eliminating the pop-ups. sub in a "redraif" style lo-beam "driving" light, and put the hi-beam behind the grill of my 82 front bumper. here's my best mspaint job of what i'm talking about

scauffiel

Check the laws in your state. I think headlights have to be a certain height off the ground to pass state inspection. Not to mention in order to be useful.

S.

Dingley

iTrader: (1)

getting inspection is not a problem.. you don't think those lights will be enough to illuminate the road?

Dingley

iTrader: (1)

this guy seems to hvae enough light coming from those little headlights to work... so i don't think i should ha ve a problem

pizza_guy

can u say ewwww!

anyway, I had a fiero and replaced the pop-ups with "ferrari" lights or whatever. They were about that size, and at 55 on a backroad at night(read: DARK), I had to slow down cause the dang lights couldn't light up the road.

I've wanted to lose the pop-ups since I got my 'bird three years ago, but I'm sooo out of ideas that would leave me with decent lighting, I'm thinkin of gettin a 'maro just to ditch the pop-ups.

sad

Dingley

iTrader: (1)

i don't want my car's body to look anything like the above picture, just an example of headlights in that area with the molded hood. even with the hi-beam lights on, it wouldn't illuminate the road?

85f-bird

alright, i'll see if i can sum it up in a few short sentences. There are often laws in most states that prohibit your headlights from being below a specified height, "ricers often get in trouble when they SLAM their cars on the ground, the lights are below the mandated elevation" .... i highly doubt that your headlights, not popping up, would place them under this height, if naything, they're most likely very close to the location of a camaro's headlights, for your regular beams. Your high beams being low and in the bumper will most likely cause you some problems, as you can tell in that picture, the car actually has low and highbeams in the old concealed headlight housing, this allows both to be at the same level.

I've got foglamps on my car which of course are at the bottom of the bumpers in the factory GFX fog lamp holes, the lamps use H3 12v 55w bulbs , and they're honestly bright as daylight, however, because of their low angle, the don't do a great job of lighting the road in front of you more than 10-15 feet. This is the same problem youd encounter with your highbeams , if they are "too low".

Another problem, angling the highbeams towards the pavement will also interfere with your factory grille. Because of this, a good portion of the lights are going to be hitting the grill, and that'll break up the light that actually comes in contact with the pavement, further reducing the ability for it to light the road.

If you don't have any fears of inadequate lighting, then i'd advise you to go for it, and get yourself the light setup you want, just be prepared to do a lot of tweaking trying to find a way to create ample light and still retain the "look" you're going for.

I've always thought that headlights under plexiglass in the factory location, but w/o the popup feature would be neat, but unfortunately, i'm more than unwilling to try the idea to my car. It would be somewhat exotic if done right, and completely trashy if done wrong.

TomP

I never understood why people buy Firebirds, but hate the pop-up lights...

MNformula350

iTrader: (2)

I'm with you Tom, i don't mind my pop up lights, granted they look funny when up but hey that's just a Firebird If people are doing it to prevent having to pay the cost of new motors, i think that's just stupid...cars cost money that's just the way it is, if you don't like it ride a 10 speed.

85berlinetta2.8

get a knight rider bumper with the lights in the grill

Dingley

iTrader: (1)

its not that i don't like pop-ups, its that someone f*cked with the wiring for it, so i wanted to do something different with my bird, rather than just be another firebird on the road, i'd like mine to stand out a little bit. also, I HATE the knight rider bumper... UGLY

2out_The_Left

i was talking about this months ago on another post. my idea was to get the light moldings from either a 93-97 camaro or a pontiac grand am/prix SE (the ones with the little slits for lights) you could eliminate the flipups totaly and smooth out the hood. you'd have to use the top of your old lights to glass or bondo to the hood, but it will work. you'll have to chop up the light moldings to make them work and find a way to support them. on the 3rdgen camaros the molding are bolted between the nose and fender to hold them in place so you'd have to work around that some how. i think its a great idea and you should go for it. i was aiming for it also but junked my bird to finish my camaro.

deadbird

The camaro/grand prix lights are roughly ½" taller (maybe a little more) than the opening in the firebird nose which would shroud the light and if the high/low were both used the turn signal would have to be cut down in width.

tamatt27

Hey!...Watch yourself But good luck on the idea. I like my pop-up lights, but alternatives intrigue me. I hope ya can make it work, I wanna see pics! I've got 2 sets of fog lights, and 2 are just for show. But I can drive with just the outer set on, and no headlights and I see fine!

fordsfairlane

when i first got my bird the light 's didnt popup , so as not to get into trouble and to get the car home i replaced the factory fog light bulbs 55w, with 100w bulbs, not as much light as the head lights but it got me home, then later i rewired my pop up motors to woork off a toggle switch, momentary on/off/on. the switch cost around $5, to $6 bucks, much cheeper than a total nose job to the car. just my 2 cent's worth.

Dingley

iTrader: (1)

grand prix lights are out of the question according to deadbird,

and no offense tamatt, just not my taste

i just got to find headlights that will accept the camaro light harness... are there a lot out there?

deadbird

I didn't quite say that... I was just pointing out an issue I crossed when I put the GP lights in my car. The biggest 'issue' I had was having a fixed light with part of it shrouded.
I know they still make those silver half-moons for the round lights (on older cars) that shrouds the upper 1/3 of the lamp. They are meant to be for using your high beams w/o blinding oncomming traffic (blocks the upper part of the beam dispersion) as was explained to me.
That would be somewhat of the effect on the GP light if it were used as a fixed lamp. The other problem I questioned is if the focused area of the beam would be high enough to get past the nose while aimed at the ground at a reasonably useful range in front of the car.
By all means though... don't let what I have to say damper your mission at it's just my point of view on it. As far as wiring goes.. at minimum (if you can't solder wires), you can use the male end of a spade connector on the new harness plug and plug the spade into the old harness plug. That's how I have mine untill I can get around to finishing them up.

thirdgen88

Just don't drive at night... Seriously though, whats the terrible problem with pop-up lights?? The only time it becomes a style issue is when you have them on at night, and the thing about night is that it is dark and you can't see, so who cares??

deadbird

I personally like the pop-ups. I , however, never cared for the semi-truck sized lamps (yes, I'm exaggerating a little). I figured I could improve the design to cater to my taste since I had everything apart anyways to fix my motors so now, I have both features I like, small lamps and they still pop up..

85f-bird

in a personal opinion, i think the pop-ups are great, and it's a beautiful thing that seperates the camaros from the birds, (why i like birds better) they do look funny when up however, but....like stated b4, they're only up at night, and at night, they don't look THAT funny. If you look at the last T/A's , not early 4th gens, but the 98+ versions, the lights are still popups of course, but they don't pop nearly as high as our style, this gives a smaller angle between the headlight door and the hood, and makes the lights look much less , out of place.

Dingley

iTrader: (1)

deadbird, that headlight (according to your pic) still looks a little tall to fit under the hood like in my idea. it would be great if i coudl find headlights that are very short and wide.. like 1 inch tall and 8 inches wide. that's what i'm really looking for, i bet someone makes it... if anyone found one, someone please tell me

i think i might just use the hi-beam light from a third gen camaro to put behind the grill... according to my tape measurer, it should fit....

Gumby

Looks like your hood is open a bit in that pic. makes it look funky and I can't get a good eye of its lines.


I wonder about areodynamics though. Which way does it hurt less.

Do straight up as a blunt flat object cause less drag?
Or is the part way up with the air grabing it like a lip, creating lift???

Dingley

iTrader: (1)

and i want to separate myself a bit from all the other firebirds out there, but still maintain the stock look of the car.

deadbird

Or, not even on the car yet (still working on it too.. )

redraif

One thing I saw recently...at autozome they have the lights I used for my conversion. The thing I hated was having the 2 side by side and it making them a bit too wide. Well the other day I was at autozome and they had some smaller version of my lights that were not driving lights, but tru fog lights. they are narrower. I thought, if I did it over again I would use a set of driving lights for the low beams, since thay have a biult in diffuser in the lense and the fog version for the high beams. They would fit side by side in the housing w/o being too wide. Which would mean less cutting on the inner metal structure and plastic housing. And the extra room would give some more adjustment room for aiming!

SO FAR, no cops have even noticed mine and the car is also lowered.

Dingley

iTrader: (1)

thanks to whoever's car this is.... here's a better pic of what i'm talking about for headlights... just need suggestions of what kind of lights to use to fulfill this!

tamatt27

Wow, Redraif! Where have you been the past few months!? Post some more pics when ya'll make someprogress on it! I'd be very interested!

redraif

Oh I plan to give the whole story when we get the mod done.

Here is my explaination from another post on why I've been away!

Yep I'm still alive...so I have been missing from the internet. Because of the job I got last Aug, I could not get online at work like I used to. At home... Up until a few days ago I had some serious cable issues with my cable modem...can you say idoit cable repair guys! I had tried cable because the phone lines here have always carried to much static, so the dial up and dsl route did not work! SO I went with cable...good idea, yeah right.

I have been complaining for years about poor tv reception. At one point they inspected the cable lines & said I had a negative input. Instead of replacing the line, the put in an amp. Well that sort of worked, till I got internet cable access a few monthes ago. It never worked, thought it was a virus, but it was the darn old lines from the road. So finally after all these years of bad reception & complaining someone finally agreed w/ me and replaced the freaking line up to the road. I can finally get online and see all my channels clear! Yeah!

Now I just have to find time to post...I have a ton of emails to check up on. My website is a mess...cardomain did something and all my pics are mixed up. Then when I do move them the sizes are wrong! Man what 9mo of neglect can do!

Still going strong on Raif though...more performance stuff lately. Did an engine swap...nope not a V-8 though, had to have the car back up and running too soon. Instead a 3.4 block swap. See, my back up dually got stolen as some of you know. It's now engine & transmissionless, so it made Raif my only car. So the 3.4 was a good quick upgrade...gave me 75 extra ftlbs of torque! HP is up too, but not enough...going to do some more aggressive porting the help the car breath and go with bigger exhaust. Then once the 82 is done right I will put a real motor in RAIF.

How's that for an I'm back post!

Dingley

iTrader: (1)

hows that for a thread hijack... ARRRRRRR

tamatt27

Lol, sorry Dingley I do think Redraif'll be the most help with your proposed headlight mod, since she's done it on the RAIF.

However, I do like the lazy eye look a little better than the non-pop up lights..

jay92,85,79

iTrader: (1)

I'm going to be starting on doing this to my firebird next week.The 2 ways i was thinking about is.( i'm doing 2 light side by side)first way (hardest way) is to get some grand or 4 gen camaro lights.make my own core support mount them to to it.Only thing about this u will have to cut some of the bumper out to make them fit.The other way is like refraif said use the fog lights.The core support would be real easy to make since fog lights use one bolt in the middle to hold them on.The wireing is the part i'm not to good at when that time comes I will figure it out I hope. I don't mind the flip up headlights but would be pretty cool to have this set up since i have only seen like 2 or 3 firebirds with it done.

Dingley

iTrader: (1)

yea, its okay tamatt... i wanna see what RAIF would look like with the headlight door molded into the hood to make one big hood. therefore it would still be retaining stock appearance, but owuld have fixed headlights.

i saw an old sunbird with VERY thin headlights!! anyone who has any info on this would be great!!

redraif

Not wanting to jack the post...

On the headlight doors modded to the hood idea...I have given it very serious thought...I'm just not sure if I can go back and add it to this fiberglass hood and ever get it strong enough, or to look right. Would require me to sand down a step (top and bottom) of some kind into the existing piece so I could build up the head light door area with fiberglass sheets that would overlap onto the hood. I need to call SunCoast and ask them what they think the best way to do it is or if it would even be strong enough.

If you have a steel hood it would be easier. The best way would be to get another bad hood from a junk yard and try to cut steel from it, since it should have the same contour. Then weld it together. I wondered if the existing headlight door would work, but after looking at it, I don't think its made of the same metal. I think the door is pot metal (very low grade) I'm not sure if they 2 would weld together well.

ksrammstein

I love the pop up headlights. Thats one of the reasons I got a Bird. Always said that the firebird is a corvette in different skin and look at the fuss about them removing the pup up lights from the corvette.

Ward

iTrader: (1)

Woohoo! someone used the pic I made! Thats not my car though, I can't remember where I got the original pic.

Dingley

iTrader: (1)

i think this is the light RAIF used. i think i can get these to work! what does the back of them look like. can they project a hi and lo beam? what does the back of them look like?

nyte_ryder

heres one for you... what im gonna do to fix mine is a conversion, and yes if you are wondering there is one out there... its called quit nagging or put a camaro front clip on the car.... no really what im doing is basicially since im gettin a 4"cowl for free and i dont like the gta front .... im gonna use a 91 front air dam, side skirts and gta rear valance, plus it will be less weight since were not runnig a bumper under it and having aluminum supports made to hold the nose up

deadbird

n/m...wasn't worth what I said and made even less sense than the previous post.....

Dingley

iTrader: (1)

i will not turn my car into a firemaro... YUCK. i love the way the firebird looks, i just don't want the popup headlights.... but other than that, i love the body lines..

305Tiger

Dig- I JUST got those lights you posted a pic of, last week! They cost me $40, and are labeled as driving lights on the box. I'll post more info as soon as I get the box outta the T/A in the morning.
-G

Dingley

iTrader: (1)

GREAT... can you tell me if it will hook up to the female end of the headlight wiring harness for the low/high beam light

FBodesigner

Nobody has mentioned the 91-92 Aero-kit look...just wire the driving lights in the bumper cover into the head light switch.

Dingley

iTrader: (1)

i don't have a 91-92 front end, so it doesn't apply to me. plus, i think you'd get pulled over for driving with just fog lights on , or o something like that....

redraif

Those are the ones! Let me see if a have a shot that shows the back. Not they can't shine hi and low beam. I had to one to my lows the other to my high beams. The high beams I set at a higher angle.

redraif

Ok I used 2 pairs of the above driving lights...

Your factory harness, if like mine, will have a 3 prong female weather pack that will accept a blade terminal type of connector. Your 3 wires are a ground, a high beam power, and a low beam power.

As for the driving lights...If I remember right the lights came with the power wire on the lights having a male blade terminal. The ground wire had a male bullet connectors...So I got some female bullet connectors and got two small pieces of black wire. I put the bullet ends on one end of each piece of wire. These I connected to the diving lights ground wire. The two other ends I put together into a single male blade terminal connector.

I tested the car with a test light to see which wire was high beam and which was low, by turning on the lights with the weather pack unplugged from the factory headlamp. I simply grounded the clip and of my test light and used the probe on the other end to stick in the female connector to see which lit my test light on high and then low. Then I picked which driving light, Inner or outer, I wanted to be which. Then I simply slid the male driving light connector directly into the female weatherpack.

The ground wires, joined together into a single male blade terminal on the driving lights, I slid in the (black) factory ground female slot.

It was just that simple.

LT1guy

iTrader: (1)

One of the fiberglass companies (VFN maybe?) makes a flat Firebird hood like this already, though its for racing and likely made as a pin on. It would require some modifications, but for anyone not wanting a RA style hood it may be the easiest way. Redraif and I have talked about modifying her hood like that, but honestly I like the looks of the hood better as is...just a Firebird thing I guess.
I'm going with a headlight conversion like Redraif's (with her help), with the new lights she mentioned, but mine will be recessed slightly to hide the lights behind a thin sheet of smoked lexan. I'll use brighter bulbs to compensate. This way, the car will look stock at a glance, but at night the lights will shine through.

LASGTA88

i was thinking the exzact same thing on hiding them more and covering them..

will look sweet in my opinon. i got a Fire Mist Red GTA that im goin to do this with

LA

85VortecTA

Deadbirds design is by far the best I have seen. You get the to keep the flip up light but it only goes up a quarter of what it used to and it gives the car a lazy eye look. Since the motor has to travel less distance in theory it shoudl take much more time for it to wear


I will be attempting this when I have the funds to take on the project.

RSFreak

Those don't seem much smaller than '93 - '97 Camaro head lights. They should be enough to light up the road.

85VortecTA

you don't neede huge ******* looking headlights to have good night vision, a friend of mine installed fogs where his front blinkers used to be and moved his blinkers to where the headlight bezels were, I think it looks great and might just do it myself if I decide not to go deadbirds route. We tested it at night and it looks almost like he's driving with brights on.

Could be because the fogs he bought have H3 55w bulbs in them.

I'll take some pic slater and post them up for you guys to see.