One thing I noticed early on is that Helga’s headlights were a bit dim. It’s rare that I drive her at night, but it would still be nice to throw some bright, shiny lights on the road. Hence my project last month: headlights!
My original intention was to swap out the bulbs for something new and brighter. So I grabbed these halogen lamps from JBugs. That lead to me thinking that as long as I’m already in there, I may as well replace the old rubber seals because the old ones were falling off in hard little pieces.
When the bulbs came in, I took apart the first headlight assembly. It wasn’t pretty.
The seals had apparently been failing for a long time, so there was a little water and a lot of rust inside the buckets. I knew I couldn’t just leave that, so I sanded and primered it.
Then I took a look at the old assembly and it was only a little better. Or, not as bad?
I sanded and painted that, too. The driver’s side was not in great shape mechanically. The grommets for the adjustment screws had failed, so those were useless. Unfortunately, no one makes replacement parts for those, only the whole assembly. I decided to forge ahead on that side.
I also broke the parking light bulb, so I had to order a replacement. Sigh.
Then came the outer seal. I must have spent an hour trying to get it to fit around the bucket and stay on, but no dice. A lot of swearing. I thought I was crazy, because people in the Samba forums were saying how easy it is. Something had to be wrong. Sure enough, I tried to put a seal on the other side and it only took me a minute. On further inspection, I noticed that the driver’s side fender was dented and the lip of the bucket was pushed in just enough to prevent the seal from fitting correctly. So I wasn’t crazy, but it wasn’t going to work.
This is one of those times where I have to make a decision based on my future goals — namely, completely fixing the body and repainting her. That’s not going to happen for a long time, so I decided that I should just make this work as best I can for functionality’s sake. I put some silicon caulk around the bucket (no, I’m not kidding) and reassembled everything.
The passenger side was just as much of a pain, but for different reasons. At some point, someone had replaced the entire headlight assembly on that side. However, they used one that wasn’t intended for the ’66. I don’t know how they made it work, but I couldn’t get it to go back on correctly. This time instead of struggling, I ordered a new assembly. Why didn’t I do that with the driver’s side so I had two new headlight assemblies? I have no idea. It’s just how my brain works.
The other issue with the new assembly was that the parking light fixture only had two connections, where the old ones had three. And they were screw posts, not connector tabs. Hmm. That wasn’t a huge deal, I just removed the connectors and stripped the wires so I could attach them. But… three wires?
After some research I learned that sometimes people would put in a redundant ground wire and it wasn’t necessary to complete the circuit. So I taped it off, and it worked. Always learning!
I tested the new lights at night and they are significantly brighter than the old ones. Awesome. And at least the buckets won’t accumulate water anymore, which means another step towards rust prevention.
Next up: steering wheel replacement!
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