Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

The center section of the grill is 99% done. All it needs now is some massaging at the headlight ends, and paint. All cosmetics. Tomorrow I will launch into a phot journal of what I have done, and how I did it.

Thanks for the kind words Clem, at the end of it all, I hope to have a very unique rig that is not all bolt on stuff.

There is a thought....
So far the Washington State laws seem to be pretty liberal on the issue of additional lighting for passenger vehicles.

They are 10" Led Strips off the shelf from O'Reileys. My choices were white and blue. I opted for the blue to match the interior lighting I did.

Yeah ?
Well strap in buddy, because you aint seen nuthin yet !!

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

Ok guys this entire update is going to be long winded, so bear with me.
2-sum years ago when I started thinking of getting into a truck build I was looking at builds in various stages of progress, when one caught my eye and sparked my imagination. It was a light colored truck with the head light grill out, and that space behind where the grill would go was painted flat black. From that I sparked the idea of doing hideaway headlights on one of these in a way that I have not seen done yet.

I will be showing you guys my progress in chronological order, instead of any logical sense of how this should have, or could have gone together. The reason being is that I am no engineer by any sense of the word.

I was lucky enough to score a spare grill from my local bone yard that was in awesome condition, to augment my original which had survived very well also.

This first photo is the spare grill laying in place as I started the measurements for a close to original positioning look for the end result.
Attachment 1176208
Then it was removal of the headlight support:
Attachment 1176209
And the sectioning of the old headlight bezel frame:
Attachment 1176210
Then it was a matter of bending and massaging the ends to get the look I was after. I also wanted to keep as much indigenous metal as possible to the items I was working with.
Attachment 1176211
Here is initial concept in the first stage. The center section was saved and the ends which were no longer useful were used as a test subject. Here you see the folded end piece I cut off laying on top of the 1996 Cougar head light assembly door. I went with these Cougar set ups as they seemed to be pretty simple in construction, plentiful, and not as expensive on E-bay as others I looked at.
Attachment 1176212

More tomorrow, if I get out of the garage early enough... right now dinner is getting cold, and wife is getting cranky about it !!!

LOL :metal:

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

Oh Murph, Im first in line waiting.

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

What a cool idea! Good luck with it, you are great with your ideas on your truck. Keep it up and keep the updates coming our way.

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

I'm in the crowd that is enthusiastically waiting to see how this turns out. Your out of the ordinary ideas are always dazzling!

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I'm #4 Watching and Anticipating…;)

Evaluation at this point...:jdp: Very nice way of Raising that bar...:metal:

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

Great thinking Michael.

You know I love the "make it up as you go along" design ethos once you have a vision of where you are headed.

Now here's a bit of sideways thinking from your original design.
Would the mechanism from a Mazda Miata MX5 pop up headlight unit with some slight mods also be able to give you the same effect if you shortened the actuating lever to double or increase the radius of travel?

Thanks for the process tutorial.

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

Ok, I gots ta know!

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More more more!

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oh hell watch you go again blowing our minds wide open

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

This is my test end with the Cougar light boxes, and door resting in a spare grill face. Since I ordered new fenders anyways, I cut the orginals and used them as end caps/stands.
Attachment 1176664

After it looked like my test "ends" would work, I went ahead and cut my original grill. The second one I had gotten seemed to be better and less warped or bent in the middle, so my original got to donate the "ends" or the door cover part of the grill.
This is after the bending and welding:
Attachment 1176665

Here is the d-side, and how it welded up sweet as pie:
Attachment 1176666

And the d-side again with my weld job all cleaned up:
Attachment 1176667

With all the banging and rough working I figured this piece was going to go through, I left the ends on until the last possible moment to try and minimize bending and warpage.
Here I have done my initial hammer and dolly work to beat out the "C" "H" and "E" on the p-side, which I mirrored on the d-side. In retrospect I think I should have made some relief cuts with my dremmel and welded them up to smooth out these letters as it turned out to be quite the chore. However this was before I really knew how much time I was going to spend with my dremmel on this project.
Attachment 1176668

So there you go, this is today's update on this craziness...

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

Thanks Greg, you know I am your #1 fan too !!

Thanks Owen, it has been a real challenge so far !!

Thank you Mark, I decided if I was going to tailor a build to what I really wanted, then the sky should be the limit....or maybe not... the moon perhaps? LoL

Well thanks Don, but I doubt I am rasing any bars.... a few mugs of beer though is a different story. Too many guys with great skills around here for me to compete with.

I dont know about the Miata units, there weren't any in the local junk yard for me to cannibalize, nor did it occur to me. The actuators I got are off a Honda Prelude circa 97-98ish....? In looking back, I wish I had spotted the '87 Fiero sooner as it seems their actuators are geared to open/close or push/pull whereas the Honda ones are a full 360* turn, with a set 160* -ish sweep for the headlight doors. The Fiero ones would have saved me many days of tinkerings to get the action correct for the doors....

Always good to see you checking in on me LowElco!! I think you been in on this since the start....

Its coming !!
Gotta give you guys time to digest all this so I dont over load you !!

Well, Ok.....
Not really sure what to say to that, I hope you like it.
Though I realize I am chopping the hell out of one of these trucks to suit myself; but in the end I guess I am the one that has to be seen in it...

It is going to be kinda fun at car shows though, I think..... hahahahahah :metal:

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

It'll be like a phantom grille, only rolling the ends like a cougar, or '60's Camaro, correct? That oughta be cool!

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

Grill is coming out great. Can't wait to see the finished product.

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

are you going to change the headlights to square ?

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

Yes, pretty much.

Thnaks, it has been a great project so far, just worrysome in the time sink it has been. I have a few more things I want to get done to this rig still.

Yes as you can see in one of the mock up photos, I will be using the rectangle headlights from the '85 Sierra. I think they will look more natural with the squared off lines of the grill than round ones would.

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

Just some more progress photos as we settle into the weekend !!

Here is how the two end pieces came out with the ends capped and the letters hammered out. They have since taken a lot more tweaking, massaging, time and attention, but looking at this grill mod I think I could see myself doing this again just as a center grill and doing something else with the headlights.
Attachment 1178722

In the process of mocking this project up, I realized the original face where the headlights mounted was too countoured for me to work with. I am not so good with engineer math....
This was the initial cut for the doors to swing up into.
Attachment 1178725

So I really wanted to make this fill panel one piece, but my sheet steel was not big enough. Here is the two piece I had to go with:
Attachment 1178726

Then it was a matter of hanging the face and marking it all up with measurements and land marks. I didnt know from the git-go how this was all going to work out, but I did know that I was not going to mess with my radiator mount pillars....
Attachment 1178727

This last one is just a glam shot... I think it looks pretty cool like this.
Attachment 1178728

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

:metal:

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

Whoa!
Murph, what a super cool idea!
I am watchin' patiently for distinctive looking results!
what a handfull of work!

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

pretty cool so far

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

Looking good

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Wow, it is looking good. I am interested in how you will get it to look all together. Thanks for the update and pictures. Keep up the amazing work!

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

:metal: back at ya Don !!

Thanks Modges, I keep thinking of you while I been doing this. Would be nice to have you checking my work as I went along because I worked myself into SO many corners on this one that I had to back track out of to get it all to come together right.

Thanks guys !

Thanks Owen, the more it get it together the harder it is to stop at night, but dinner burning is a smell you cannot get out of the house or the marriage, soooooooooooooooo

************************************************************************************
I meant to update BEFORE the holiday, but got too motivated to work on it...
Then I meant to update DURING the holiday weekend, but was so motivated that I worked up to the last moment each day...
Then I meant to update AFTER the weekend, but ....

Well here we are finally I guess:
There ended up being 4 parts to this project (and I almost added a fifth part today but undid it and hung it back on the wall for another day) The Face what the headlights and grill mounted to, the Grill, the Headlights, and the Air Dam.
One of the corners I worked myself into was not bringing many of these parts or phases of this mod together soon enough, then had to undo some stuff once I did...

A friend of mine has a very sweet TransAm, and the PONTIAC lit up on the tail always caught my eye, so I wanted my CHEVROLET in my grill to do the same.
These photos are my test piece. I chose the [R] because I knew it would be the most challenging letter in the bunch.
I taped it off to accent the edges of the stamped letter in the metal.
Attachment 1182863
Using a very small drill bit, I punched the corners and stop points that would be important.
Attachment 1182864
Then I removed the tape so it would not bog down my dremmel tool
Attachment 1182865
This is after just cutting with the dremmel, with a piece of green tape across the back side
Attachment 1182868
This is with the LED strip lights behind it, to show the letter off.
Attachment 1182869

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

Then it was time to pull the trigger on the full size center section of what would be my new grill.
This time I used a larger drill bit on the [R] [O] and [C] letters to cut out those curves more naturally. It seemed to work out well.
Attachment 1182871
Attachment 1182872

Then I had to mod up a light box for the LED strips to go in, that would be leak proof so that the light only spilled out where I wanted it to, and not light up my entire grill and radiator.
Since I wanted something I could access later, I welded in these extension nuts:
Attachment 1182875

Then it was fun and wacky times with 1/8" thick plexiglass. This stuff has form memory, so if you heat it and leave it, it will cool back to its original shape. If you heat it, and rapidly cool it, it will keep the shape you want it to.
Until you heat it up again, then it will go back to its original shape again.... Le Sigh....
So this is me with my you-betcha heat gun, and a small sand bag on the bottom of some round stock. I would heat up and shape a letter, then set the sand bag on it, heat from the bottom some more, then let it set and cool while I started on a new letter further down the line.
Attachment 1182876

After it was all formed I stuck it in the blast cabinet and "frosted" one side of the plastic.
Attachment 1182877

Ok more later guys, chew on that for a bit, eh?

Re: Not Another Rebuild Thread....
 

The boundaries of your imagination boggle my mind! Very impressive, looking forward to the finished result for sure! I'm great at copying ideas. I can even improve on them. But thinking up stuff out of thin air has never been one of my gifts. Keep it up!