Hot Rods thoughts on lighting

I am longtime caretaker of 34 Chevy Master 5 wdo. After lusting for "big headlights" for years, I finally added 33-34 Ford commercial lights mounted on "short" stands to the existing fender brace hole. These are the Bob Drake version w/excellent low beam light (best of 3 different styles of headlights used over the years). Problem is reflectors are permanently mounted to buckets and after rotating the lens to have vertical flutes and adjusting on low beams, high beams are directed to the trees due to angle of the reflector. This Chevy is first and foremost a driver, and although I seldom use high beams, I can see the need on dark two lanes. My thought is a projector style light mounted behind crank hole in grill. Anyone have thoughts or better yet, similar experience?

 

i like em....10 years on the hamb and only 2 posts ?

 

it is not the reflectors that are directing the light, it is the lens. for a driver put a light with a seal beam in it.

 

PHROG, did you attempt to mount the lights to the original headlight stands? Was there interference? I've thought of drilling out the original stands to accommodate the 5/8 thread on the Ford lights...

 

Any light mounted that low will only light up the ground close to the car. In a "high beam situation" it may even cause you to see less, as you get blinded by the bright ground close to you, so the darker areas further ahead can't be seen.
I can't quite tell how tight the grille cover is, but if it can let enough light through and there's enough space to the radiator any kind of auxillary lights could be hidden high up in there. Sure, quite a bit of the light won't get through, but using modern HID or LED units you may have light to spare anyway.

But I'd also take a closer look at the headlights to figure out why there's such a height difference between high and low beam. Incorrect bulbs, or incorrect position of bulbs perhaps?

 

Fix what you have, maybe ‘longer’ stands, or spacers, to get correct angles ?
Should the headlight be straight up and down, not at an angle like you have them ?
Close up pics may help.

 

I am not quite sure what you mean by this, but somehow to my mind, if you have been rotating the lens, you may have created the problem, depending on how the lens works ?
Why would you rotate the lens anyway ?

 

Building a 34 master and considering these headlights, hope the original poster can elaborate his choice in mounting and light emit issues..

 

Did you try giving the lense a 180, maybe it's designed for one specific direction ?

 

When you rotated the lens to vertical, did you rotate the reflector as well??. On dip beam, pointed at a wall the top of beam pattern should be horizontal. The "old" lens pattern will difuse it a bit.

 

Might take another 10 years to find out if he got it sorted..........

 

Since you rotated the lens 90°. You now have the bulb 90° to the lens . That should be your problem. You mentioned the reflector being part of the reflector, that's weird because usually the bulb mounts from behind except on very old lights that uses the 3 prongs bulbs. Anyway you need to rotate the bulbs or reflectors 90° clockwise facing you. Headlight bulbs have a side up position so that should be your problem.

 

I use the original headlamp stanchions on my 35 Standard, fender to grill shell, with OEM buckets, reflectors and Tiltray lenses. I use H4 bulbs that were made to suit, they maintain correct forward focus with no search light issues. I see a donor car to the left with headlamps, are they rebuildable? Could it be the Ford lamps rejecting the Chevy body like a donor organ?

 

I hope it's not organ rejection!! I have no original parts so these repo headlamp assemblies give the original-ish look I'm shooting for on my Chevy...