Bob Drake headlight issue

A couple years ago I bought a pair of '34 Ford passenger repop headlights from Drake and have had them mount since October of last year. This past weekend I noticed that two screws on EACH headlight had come loose enough to fall out. These light have four screws that hold the bucket to the mount. They're little carriage bolts with locking nuts with the little washers that are attached to the nut on the inside. While they might look nice from the outside, the nust seem to work loose from the vibration of at least my coupe.

My fix for this is to replace the carriage bolts with stainless screws and stainless nuts with the nylon locking ring. These probably will be far less likely to back off under vibration. I'd hate to loose one of these pricey headlights due to several $.06 locking nuts that don't lock all that well.

Just a head's up for anyone else who has a set of these lights...

Vance

 

locktite um

 

Since what was there wasn't SS, I want to replace them anyway so I figured I'd switch nut styles while I was at it.

vance

 

I have grown to use lots of nylon lock nuts. They are fantastic in applications where you must hold back on the torque value.

 

Be carefull using S/S carrage bolts and Ni locks. The nuts will gauld and the only way to take them apart is the grind them out. Found out the hards way.

 

loctite dude

 

I have found that if youre going to use mild steel and stainless fasteners together ( for what ever reason) it really pays to use neverseize .It cuts down on the gaulling effect almost completely.Just remember to use it sparingly with nyloks or you'll defeat the purpose!! Mike

 

Well, the headlights in question are allegedly SS and the carriage bolts that I replaced weren't. I noted above that I replaced them with SS screws. As far as using Locktite, anti-seize and all that other tubed stuff; I always seem to loose the damn tube after the first time I use it no matter how careful I am to put them away. I think I have tube gnomes in the garage.

Besides, what I did seems to work as expected. I was just trying to warn others about a potential problem if they have similar lights...

Vance