troppo

looks great!

mattipuh

Nice work guys! waiting for a bolt on -kit!

FRporscheman

Also waiting for a kit! Looks great guys! But I'm guessing it doesn't look as good on a brighter color.

Kev, that's the glossiest black 968 I've ever seen!

rdhayward

I'd like to see a kit or detailed instructions on DIY for this. I know the 968 is rather defined by its headlights, but I'm just not a fan of the pop-ups.

mattipuh

is it difficult to make frame for new lights? What kind of mounting points have you used? I'd be interested in design measurements/ drawings done...

sydneyman

ever make it back from Road Atlanta? pics!

linzman

Trying to revive an old thread. Anyone else do something like this? Any detailed parts/instructions?

Thanks

Cloud9...68

I did a fixed headlight conversion on my car, using Hella Bi-halogens. Here's a picture of the finished result:

Attachment 824076

I attached the Hella's to the bulkhead via some brackets that I made, constructed two-piece buckets from aluminum flashing, made custom-shaped aluminum brackets to attach the buckets to the fender, and yes, I even made my own curved lexan covers. But I have to tell you, it is a very time-consuming, tedious, and at times very frustrating project, unless you have the patience of a monk. There's no template to work from so it's a lot of custom fabrication, which means a lot of trial and error. And in my case, lots and lots of error. Here are some pictures of the project as it went along:

Attachment 824077
Headlight mounted to the bulk head

Attachment 824078
Lower half on bucket in place

Attachment 824079
A few of the bucket-mounting brackets

Attachment 824080
Rear and lower bucket pieces in place

Attachment 824081
Close-up of a curved lexan cover

The lexan cover creation was quite an adventure. I'm not sure how many pictures Rennlist allows per post, so I'm going to show how I made then in a separate post below.

Cloud9...68

OK, to create the curved lexan covers, here's what I did: I fist obtained a couple of pieces of scrap 1/8" thick lexan from the machine shop at work. I had one of the machinists cut them into rectangles a few inches on a side larger than the final size of the covers. I cut templates for the covers out of cardboard, and created the following contraption, in which I very carefully cut an oval in a piece of 1/4" MDF exactly 1/4" larger than the template:

Attachment 824082
Frame on which the lexan rested during the heating process

The idea was to place the lexan on this frame, place a curved weight in the center, place the assembly in the oven, and let the lexan sag until it reached the appropriate radius of curvature. Finding an appropriately shaped weight took awhile - it's amazing what a "flat" world we live in. But I finally settled on this piece of wooden staircase trim:

Attachment 824088
Weight I placed in the middle of the piece of lexan during the heating process

But I had a problem - how would I know when the piece had sagged enough to reach the target radius of curvature? I needed an endpoint detector, in other words. So, I attached a metal right-angle bracket to the weight, and attached a wire to the bracket. I attached another wire to an arm I attached to the frame, which you can see in the picture of the frame. I bought some insulating jacket material to place over the wires, which I ran out of the oven, and attached to the leads of an ohmmeter. I strategically set the distance from the bracket on the weight to the screw connecting the wire to the arm to match the desired radius of curvature. I then VERY CAREFULLY placed the whole assembly in the oven, and placed an additional metal weight to the top of the wooded weight. This was pretty dicey, as there was a high risk of the weights tipping over. I then heated the oven to something like 275 degrees, and waited until the lexan sagged enough for the metal pieces to complete the circuit, and trigger the ohmmeter. Then, I traced the cardboard template onto the now-curved lexan, cut it to size with a manual saw (I was afraid a jigsaw would be too risky), and sanded the edges to give them a smooth appearance, and get the pieces to their final size.

Then, all that was left was fabricating the small mounting brackets for the covers, drilling the holes in the fender for the brackets, painting the brackets and screws black, and attaching them to the car. I've very pleased with the end result. However, I think the weight savings is well under 50 pounds. I sold my original headlight assemblies, and the entire box with all the parts weight 38 pounds. Still a substantial savings, but well shy of 50 lbs.

As far as the aesthetics of it, I think for a "light-in-a-hole" approach, it looks OK, but I do think it kind of ruins the aesthetics of the 968. I did it strictly to save weight, as my car is a mostly-dedicated track car. Also, the quality of the light sucks - far worse than stock. With the high beams on, the bi-halogen light throw off about as much light as the stock headlights in low beam mode.

So would I recommend doing this? Only for a track car. I've never indexed a set of torsion bars, but from what I've read, I would say this conversion was at least as difficult. Would I do it for anyone else? Sure - assuming a wage of about $3.00/hr, I think $10K would be about right

quick968

Not to mention, have you considered replacing those awful, hand slicing, old-school, hood pin latches with some from aero catch?

http://www.aerocatch.com/

Some nice black ones would just disappear on the big beautiful black hood and look so much nicer.

Cheers
Mikey

monteolsen1

This is an amazingly inventive and great looking project. Congratulations. All of your hard work paid off and you didn't have to alter the fenders at all.

quick968

Have you considered changing from the poopy halogens to HID's? Retro Solutions makes em for every halogen bulb out there, very inexpensive, very compact, plug and play. 35W would be a good place to start, and 55W will burn the hair off a dog at 100 yards. No need to "settle" on the light output. Make the light match the look. :thumb up: And it looks GREAT.

Cheers
Mikey

grants_968

Very inventive. I'm impressed.

Cloud9...68

Thanks, guys, and thanks, Mikey, for the tip on the HID bulbs. As long as it's plug-and-play, and I don't have to EVER take the assembly apart ever again, lol! It's amazing how crappy the bulbs that came with the Hella's are, so it's good to know there's an alternative.

quick968

Yep, completely plug and play. And Jay, the owner, has outstanding customer service, unbeatable warranty. You can actually call him, and he picks up the phone. No goofy Hong Kong/Taiwan ebay crap, he's right here in the US. I've purchased 5-6 different kits from him for various cars. The ballasts have a decent length harness so you can easily mount the ballasts in an easily accessible point, but these new Digital ballasts/bulbs last and last. Thousands of hours. Far less heat than halogens, FAR less current draw too. Resist the temptation to get ANY color temp above 6000K, I'd strongly recommend 5000K for the nice pure white. 6000K for just a tiny hint of blue, but lumen output drops as color temp increases. Check out his web page, lots of good info there.

http://retro-solutions.net/product-l...pg1-cid86.html

Cheers
Mikey .