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Old March 13th 2012, 04:41
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owdlvr owdlvr is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Canada - West Coast
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Alrighty! Back into the garage, though this time I think the post is better if I start with the finished product first, and then show the work behind it:







Some nights I think my roomate and I should open up a rally shop. The PIAA lights mounted to the car? Yeah, those came out of our "spares" collection :P Two of the lights were used on my '69 beetle, one is brand new, and fourth is a light that was on his Subaru but gave up it's lens to the gravel gods. So, if I simply get a replacement lens for the lamp, I have four. Looking at the photos though, they seem small. Don't get me wrong, they "suit" the car, and I'm not going to change out for the larger set. They just don't scream "80's Group-B Rally Lights!!" like my previous Audi did :P

Throughout the mounting process I was continually thankful I decided to run with the smaller 6" lights, vs. the 8.5" Bosch 220's. Fitting these was enough of a pain-in-the-butt that I wouldn't want to try the 225's. The factory cars all seem to be drilled right through the bumper, but I have no idea what they did 'inside' the bumper to take the weight and keep the lights from shaking. Mounting rally lights requires two basic steps: 1) The lights must be 300 times more secure against vibration then you think they should be. And 2) make the lights removable if possible. There is nothing worse, and more tiring, then lights that shake and vibrate while running off road. The strobe effect is distracting and tiring. Removable lights means you don't risk wrecking the lights during the day, and thus blowing any chance you had at night. With that in mind...

Lights follow the curve of the bumper/front of the car...


...but are not actually mounted to the bumper. I used 1" tubing, and some heavy-duty angle mounts to make a vibration-free setup.


Beginning of bar fabrication:


Mounting plates tack-welded on for testing. The two outside lights were relatively easy, but the two inside lights needed to be moved back towards the rear of the car slowly bit-by-bit to clear the front bumper. Eventually I had to notch the bar (pretty heavily) to ensure that I would be able to get a socket in to adjust the lights. I don't anticipate this will add any vibration issues though.


With that done I cut down the plates to the smallest footprint possible, welded them on fully, cleaned up the corners and gave it a coat of POR-15. Based on the photo above I just realized I probably left a weld too close to the bolt hole, so I'll need to clean and dress that tomorrow and repaint. Once it's dry, mount the lights and finish the wiring.

I still had some time before bed, so I took to finishing up some items in the trunk. With the fresh air box mounted, I needed to find a way to join the box to the defrost ducts. Eventually I decided that some aluminized jute padding would probably do the trick nicely...which it does. Problem is it looks like crap! Instead of that space-age look you think it's going to have...it just looks, well, cheap. I know the factory used plastic tubing on the inside, but none of the bits I had fit very well. On the plus side, tonight was the first time I have ever turned on a working Fresh-Air fan that I remember. WHOA!! there actually is some serious defrost air flow! Definitely did not expect that.


-Dave
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