Drilling headlights

[ianlea73]

My American Ford ltd has orange sidelight & bumper markers. For the UK, I obviously need white sidelights. When I pulled the old headlights someone had boot universal lights as a replacement for the og sealed beam. These had a sidelight inset in them with a grommet. They were never used but I'd like to do the same with my mew sealed beam headlights.
Has anyone ever drilled the back of a headlight? What bit should I use? I was thinking a ceramic tile drill bit.
Other than that a place to source headlights with the option of a push in sidelight bulb holder.

[truckdoctor]

I have used these for glass with a plasticine reservoir around the area with white spirit to lubricate. All worked well but never drilled a headlight.

[Rich]

I’ve you’ve got sealed beam headlight replacements you can’t drill a hole in them as the inert gas will escape and the lamp will immediately fail. If they are using a separate bulb unit you can drill a hole.
You could use a dim-dip system from a 90’s car to illuminate the headlamp dip circuit at reduced voltage in the parking lamp position, no one said it had to be a separate bulb for the front parking lamps.

[jimi]

^^^^ Rich is spot on, in effect a sealed beam is like a big halogen lamp, let the gas out and it's junk.
Most dim/dips used a relay and resistor (usually somewhere in 0.5 to 1 ohm range) to drop the output of the dip beams (to around 20% IIRC) and operated when the ignition and sidelights were on.

[jim]

Could the headlight be modified to take a H4 bulb?

[jimi]

Not really, certainly not something I'd want to try. They look like a fairly standard size, 6" x 4" ? You can get units that will take an H4 lamp and have a built in sidelight.

[generallee]

Would a Hella 1AB 003 177-791 fit in?
Most seem to be specified for 24v but you could swap the bulbs.

[joem83]

Nov 12, 2024 23:16:27 GMT jimi said:

Not really, certainly not something I'd want to try. They look like a fairly standard size, 6" x 4" ? You can get units that will take an H4 lamp and have a built in sidelight.

If they are that size, there's a billionty options for headlights.
DRL, LED, HID, there's loads quite cheap on ebay.

[jimi]

There's even a cheap conversion kit on the bay, with sidelights, although this one is LHD Linky

[The Jackeria]

I'd go down the alternative lighting route as above, far easier and will a better fit, not just for bulbs but moisture control as well.

[ianlea73]

Nov 13, 2024 10:11:30 GMT jimi said:

There's even a cheap conversion kit on the bay, with sidelights, although this one is LHD Linky

They're actually perfect. I'll double check sizes but that looks very promising.
Thanks.

[akku]

The standard American sealed beam is the same as the "standard" Japanese H4 lights so you can easily get RHD pattern ones. Will Datsun used to be a good source of these (Datman)