I had some free time this week so I started to assemble the grille and headlights. I thought I had the teeth - while my truck is a '54, I'm using the grille from a '53 as I like the teeth look better.

Anyways, I will have to take one more pic for all of this to fully make sense. The H4 plug that came with my headlights ( ).

So, for a relatively expensive fee - $45 from Lowes - I bought this bit shown below to open up the holes. The plug now easily fits through with about 1/16 (or 1-2 mm for you metric folks) on each side with ease.



Drill bit used to open the hole on the head-light buckets so a H4 plug for a modern LED headlight would fit through




Resized Holes



Mostly finished product

 

Looks good Jerry, do you have any pics of that H4 plug and the grommet you used to seal up that new larger hole?

 

Does the LED lamp have a pigtail?

 

Grommets are much more expensive than I would have thought:


@Mixer Man: I'm not sure what you mean by pig tail. It does have an approximate 8" cord with the H4 plug at the end.

 

Midfifty catalog page 52...item 2235, headlight socket and pigtail $19.95; item 2234, headlight grommet $1.95
Not sure how much larger your hole is now, the stock grommet may not fit.
Sometimes it is best to cut a harness and feed the wires through without the connector attached.

 

If I go by this diagram:

See next post, link would be confusing

I actually need this grommet (pack of 5, so still about $8 a grommet):



I had thought about cutting the wires and running it through, but it felt like a "cleaner" solution to enlarge the hole to run the pigtail through. That said:

• I know LED's tend to have very long life-spans and a 1 snip per light and a couple of connectors and electrical tape would have been easier as all that is hidden.
• So I definitely created more work by enlarging the holes.
• Assuming those grommets from Amazon will work, I will ironically have to cut the grommet to get the wire in to the center part.

It wasn't until Chuck asked about the grommets that I even considered it. While I plan on driving the truck a lot, Southern Cali has little rain and I hadn't planned on driving the truck when it did rain. But without grommets, I guess washing the truck would have risked getting water in that way.

 

My previous post wouldn't allow me to edit it and upload a pic, so posting it on a new post. As the drill bit I used opened it up to 1 1/8", I need a groove diameter of 1 1/8, not OD of 1 1/8

Grommet measurements

 

I would buy a couple of stock grommets. Cut a couple pieces of metal that will cover the new holes you drilled. Use some of your new 3M 08115 adhesive and bond the patches to the buckets. When the panel adhesive has cured, drill the patches to the proper size for the stock grommets and insert same.

 

That's actually not a bad idea...

Here's the pics I said I would take of the backs with the pig tails hanging out (not all the way - they're 8"+ long).

 

Those plugs were made to be mated with the connector on the end of the pigtail within the bucket. They are the same dimensions as the plug on the back of a sealed beam headlight.

 

I'll try and remember to get a pic of the other wire included with the LED headlights - it's a much longer wire, but it's plug ends are slightly larger than those pictured!

 

That's the answer I needed. Thanks.

 

Before you go too far you may want to check out the brightness of those lights. I was disappointed and sent mine back. I went back to the high output halogens. Those LEDs were not even as good as the standard bulbs, Yes, they look cool but not very functional. I think that you have to go to the more expensive LEDs but for me IMHO they were not that cool.




Halo rings on




Back to high output halogens:






-

 

Hard to tell without the pics being in the same enviroment but the led's should always be a whiter light . Cheap led's will some times not carry as well .

 

I bought the Trucklite LEDs for my truck and car, mainly because they were designed and developed for the military and they carry a MILSPEC designator. Here is a good video, https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q...B&FORM=VDQVAP, where they review and rate 12 different LED 7" sealed beams. If you have an interest in 7" sealed beam LED headlights then it will be worth your time to watch these videos. Testing in a closed environment really makes the difference when comparing/rating these headlights.