Thanks Charley for the information. All I had ever run were the sealed beams with stock wattage. Wanting to go brighter should mean close to Halogen and of course I would expect more wattage. Of course, I am out of the loop on what all is available these days for the 7" round headlights... I don't even know what those Silver Star headlights are that you spoke of. Some of the rod and custom shops have a relay harness available that can simply be tapped in to your original switch and then back to the headlights with full battery juice going to those lights. That sounds bright to me. 

This will be a 12 volt setup.



Daniel Jessup

Lancaster, California

aka "The Hot Rod Reverend"
check out the 1955 Ford Fairlane build at www.hotrodreverend.com

FWIW, I've had good luck hiding relays in a hollow voltage regulator. Looks more like stock, even if you have two of them. On a 'bird it's even up by the headlights.

miker
55 bird, 32 cabrio F code
Kent, WA
Tucson, AZ

Sylvania off at least two types of sealed beams.  One is standard.  The other is a brighter Silver Star.  The silver star draws more power, closer to that of a standard H4 bulb.  They're in most parts stores.



Lawrenceville, GA

I've been running off the shelf halogen sealed beams in my T Bird for many years. Also ran them in a '56 Ford pick up many years back. No relay and no problems with the stock headlight switch. Large improvement.

Now that is "trick"... I will have to take a look at that idea. The car has a one wire GM alternator with internal regulator anyway so no VR needed. 



Daniel Jessup

Lancaster, California

aka "The Hot Rod Reverend"
check out the 1955 Ford Fairlane build at www.hotrodreverend.com

Thanks Charley, I will take a look at what is on the shelf.



Daniel Jessup

Lancaster, California

aka "The Hot Rod Reverend"
check out the 1955 Ford Fairlane build at www.hotrodreverend.com

That is what I hear about the improvement... would like to go that route, thanks.



Daniel Jessup

Lancaster, California

aka "The Hot Rod Reverend"
check out the 1955 Ford Fairlane build at www.hotrodreverend.com

I decided last night to rub down the SS headlight trim rings with Acetone and buff them a little bit. The PO had this car painted a long time ago, and you can see from the one headlight ring how shoddy the masking work was. Red paint was all over these things. The rings are in good shape though, and do not show any dents or other problems. I decided to put some elbow grease into it and reuse them.





Before it got dark I decided to drag out that passenger fender and the sandblaster(s) to the yard and get some of that white paint removed. This was an excercise in futility. I had replaced the pressure blaster nozzle with the largest nozzle that TSC had (that is where I got the sandblaster from a few years back) and did not recognize the fact that the black diamond I had in the pot from before was 2040 - way too coarse. It kept clogging up obviously.

So, I whipped out the siphon blaster that has regular sand in it since it is only a spot blaster kind of thing and that was pretty slow, although there was no worry about heating up a panel lol!

I am going to have to buy the finer grain Black Diamond to get things going on the sandblaster, but whoever had the idea that the white part of the body needed to be taken down to bare metal was right on the money. It looks like there is a thin layer of surface rust underneath the paint layer in places. The sandblaster cleans that up nicely.





"On with the show..."

Daniel Jessup

Lancaster, California

aka "The Hot Rod Reverend"
check out the 1955 Ford Fairlane build at www.hotrodreverend.com

We had some time on Monday night to get in the garage and do a little bit... and lo and behold a good lesson learned!!! :eek:

Check out these photos:





Yep, I was pretty dumb after I blasted this fender - got my sweaty hands all over the freshly cleaned metal and after a few days surface rust began to show. :mad: Just a couple quick shots with the grinder though and it's gone. I've got to get this thing primed soon. And of course, it always go to show - keep that metal clean and dry. Hopefully next time I will remember.

This passenger fender has a small problem with it's lip up front.



The original spot welds had come apart. This lip does carry some significance since it is in a place where the front part of the fender bolts to the air dam so the pieces have to be welded together to proceed. I drilled 3/16" holes in the overlapping sheet metal and got things lined up with a couple of my handy-dandy vise grips... these things are just the ticket. I probably have 8 or 9 different sizes, shapes, and ends with these things.





Aaaaaaaaaaand if you check the following photo you will see another lesson learned.



TURN UP THE HEAT! you can see in the photo above that my "welds" did not penetrate, and off popped my lip. So we ground down the proud welds, redrilled holes, and then ended up with this strong repair.



Next, it was on to the horns. What a fun way to wake up the neighborhood. First we did a simple test of each unit to make sure they were working. I broke out the battery charger and hooked up each horn. BBBWWWAAAAAAAHHHHHHH away we went. No problems there. Just a couple of neighbor's lights came on in the bedroom next door! :p



By they way, if you are putting together a basket case, make sure you have a set of Hi and Lo horns. You can find the "Hi" or "Lo" stamped somewhere on the horn itself. Of course, you can also listen to each horn and see what you have too. Note the "Hi" stamped on this horn here...



Next would be to disassemble each one. Basically the bracket just unbolts from the side. I like to either zip tie the hardware to the bracket as shown before blasting, or I use a cricket tube like the one in the picture. That way, nothing gets lost and it is easy to hold in the cabinet!





After you remove the bracket, go ahead and remove the cover. You should have a place on the cover where you can insert a flat blade screwdriver and simply pop it off.



When I removed the covers, I had one horn that looked to be in really clean shape, and the other one had a little corrosion.



The difference? This small seal that goes in the slot in the cover where the "hot" side of things hooks to each horn. One seal was intact... the other was disintegrated. :confused:



I took the cover and the bracket/hardware and blasted them. But the horn assembly I basically took a wire wheel and other hand-powered instruments to clean so that no debris got into the contacts and what have you. We will paint these horns with Rustoleum Semi Gloss Black, make new seals and affix, and reinstall soon.

Another small detail down, many more to go!

Daniel Jessup

Lancaster, California

aka "The Hot Rod Reverend"
check out the 1955 Ford Fairlane build at www.hotrodreverend.com

Time for a "bondoscopy" of both the fenders, and the diagnosis/discovery ain't good. :mad: But it could be worse!

When you notice some signs of cancer we just know how we can be.... keep digging until you find all traces. But little did I know I would have to grind away about 3 gallons of body filler and other "imitation metal" products that a would be body man used to form 55 Ford body panels. Oh my... check it out.



Both areas showed some sign of problems, so time to grind away...





what this gray stuff is I do not know, but it was a different texture than the body filler like the Bondo brand and this stuff was very porous. Maybe it was a part of a kit to "build your own backyard body panel" from the 1980's - I have no idea. You can see this shot of the stuff getting chipped away...



and then...



Yes my friends, at least a 1/2" thick in places. On top of this repair was about 1/4" of the regular Bondo brand filler and then primer surfacer, then primer, then base coat. Anybody know what this is? It is still "pliable" - in other words it was not really brittle and was still flexible. It did grind away with a lot of dust like regular body filler.

So we did the driver's side fender too, and wouldn't you know it, the same guy did the work!



Only the passenger side had some body filler up front near the "V-8" insignia. No rot issues or anything, but it will have to be addressed to make it look it good. How much hammer and dolly I can use because of restricted access may make this one a little difficult. That lip may get in the way more than I want it to.





Next session I will cut out the rotted portions, blast the metal underneath as clean as possible, use some weld thru primer, weld in new patches, straighten, epoxy, apply some body filler and get ready for primer. Easy breezy right?

Learning as I go...

Daniel Jessup

Lancaster, California

aka "The Hot Rod Reverend"
check out the 1955 Ford Fairlane build at www.hotrodreverend.com