I have a truck grille with dual head lights that I think would make a great wall hanging in my shop and I was wondering how to go about having the lights be functional once it is hung up. I am not sure if hard wiring an AC to DC converter would work or if I should try to replace the headlights with lights that would work with 110vac. Has anyone ever done this and if so could you give me any ideas on how to do this safely. Thanks, Matt
I have the front end of an '84 Lincoln Town Car on the wall of my garage. You can use an ac to dc converter to work the headlights. They could be connected to the lights in the garage door opener to give you extra light or just be switched.
Are you doing something like this? The grill on the wall uses a converter I think to power 12v lights. The cooking grill and exhaust cover are cool also. This is in the "Red Ball Inn" in Baxter Springs Ks. Really cool place for a Hot Rod run.
yeah like that GMC grille on the wall tho that one looks like it has bulbs instead of regular sealed beams. I want to keep the original sealed beam headlights in it. guess i need to make a trip to radio shack and see what kind of converters they have.
you could always turn it into a really cool art piece... do it with neon! heres a 66 impala nose i did recently. your not too far away from me. id be happy to help you out charly
I had the front of a Buick up on a wall and used a small battery charger for power but it couldn't handle the headlights just the parking lights. Good luck and Merry Christmas, Mike.
Your'e gonna need a transformer which can supply about 13 amps- (that's if you use the "low" beam part X 4) These sealed beam lights run at about 38 watts each, the high beam can be 50W. You can run the lights straight off the A.C.secondary- the lights won't know the difference. Another way is to use an old car battery with a "standby" charger permanently hooked up to it. You will have to switch it out of the circuit when you switch the lights on. If the lights are too bright you can try a lower voltage transformer-maybe 6,8 or 10 volts.
neon charly Im thinking the neon will be a bit too bright for what I will need. But thanks for the offer. 36roadster So you think just a regular transformer will work fine then in this case? Like out of a flourescent light fixture. I was planning on only using the low beams but may eventually set up a relay switch so that I would be able to switch to high beams for more light output.
Back in the 50's the swimming pool contractor that I worked with used a transformer to power a sealed beam that he would hang into a pool. worked great.
Most of the little kitchen task light at home improvmet store iclude a 110 ac to 12V dc trasformer. they ca be wired in to the regular car lights as most asr set up to power a mess of 35 watt halogens or at least they did until the advent of LED bulbed lamps. So you can either run the lamps that come withthe kit or just power the car stuff of the transformer.
thanks plym_46 I forgot all about thos high wattage halogen light setups. That would probably be the easiest and they should have plenty of output. And yes I agree that Impala neon is way cool. If I ever get a house with a decent sice rec room in the ba*****t im coming straight to you neon charly
The "transformer" out of a fluoro light is actually a ballast, you can't do anything with it. The transformer you need would be fairly large, unless you use 4 halogen light transformers.(1 for each light). Just make sure they can handle about 3 & half amps @ 12volts each.A computer power supply may work, but you would need 1 per light (if the output of the +12volt DC section can handle 3.5amps,a bit too much for a normal computer power supply)
Observations for potential builders...... Forget automotive headlights. If you light them up, anybody on the other side of the room has car headlights in their eyes. Seriously, it ****s. Headlights also get hot, fast. Plus you gotta deal with having enough power to light them. Too much h***le. For interior use, look into a cheap LED or 12V accent light kit from a home depot type place. Not high wattage halogen, too bright, too hot. Hell, it's not hard to find a discarded landscape 12V setup with beat up heads. Everything you need is there. Anyway, the fancy store bought ones can include remotes, then you'd only need an outlet where it was hung, no switch wiring in the house/garage. It's not that hard to get the filament out of a sealed beam, there's kind of a seam there which creates a weak point, and then just silicone the lower output bulb in place. If they're LED, you can put a small blob of clear silicone on the head to reduce the laser beam effect. Exterior use, I personally always wanted one as the motion activated lights outside the garage, the daily use ones. Just don't know how I'd be able to aim the lights to be useful without having the clip look all googly-eyed. Maybe my clip will be smashed around a telephone pole so the headlights can cross in a more useful X pattern
Thanks for posting this, I have the front of my friends old buick he drove to high school on my shop wall, I've always wanted to wire it to light up!
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