Saturday, June 5, 2021
With this entry I officially launch my blog about my 1956 Plymouth Belvedere.
We had plans of going to the Taylorsville Cruise early today, but those plans fell through. We thought we might go cruising to town, but that never materialized either. My wife’s work schedule changes tomorrow; she’ll start working every Sunday, and have Thursdays and Saturdays off. She wanted to go to the grocery this afternoon, then cooked some supper. I wasn’t going to push the cruising idea, my wife needed to have time to do the things she had to get done today.
HEADLIGHT ADJUSTMENTS. I purchased a set of H4 headlights for the Plymouth earlier this year, along with a wiring harness to properly connect the headlights to the original wiring harness. The new harness avoids adding excessive current through the original wiring, and uses the original wiring to basically turn on the relays for headlights.
Anyway, I located the wiring harness and decided to dig into the headlights on the Plymouth. The right headlight came apart OK; however, I discovered that the three tabs that are riveted to the thin metal bucket that holds the headlight were in sad shape. One of the three tabs fell out of the headlight bucket when I pulled the headlight; the remaining two broke off soon afterward.
The bucket looks like its aluminum; the metal tabs are steel and riveted to the bucket with aluminum rivets. Two of the three tabs hook into the headlight adjuster screws; the third one serves as a mount for the chrome headlight retaining ring.
One of the main reasons I wanted to tear into the headlights was that a problem I uncovered when I my wife and I were driving home from the Christmas parade.
The problem? The headlights worked, but were pointing at the ground immediately in front of the car and were not doing much to illuminate the highway in front of us. It was actually a little scary driving it home, especially once we were out in the rural areas without street lights.
Well, the headlight alignment issue goes straight back to the those three mounting tabs; since they were loose and/or broken, the main force on the headlight was the downward pull on the spring located near the bottom. The spring helps keep the headlight mounted solidly in the two adjusting screws; but with the broken tabs, all bets on keeping proper headlight alignment were off.
I have the bucket repaired with new rivets and installed. I haven’t taken the left headlight apart yet, I wanted to keep one intact in the event I needed to see one that was correctly assembled. I think I’ll eventually take it apart and check it as well … and I will either change the headlights with the H4 upgrades, or first, I may just check the alignment on the headlights to see if that can improve the nightime lighting.
CRUISES AHEAD. There are car shows and car cruises all over the place this summer, including a Central Kentucky Car Show this coming Saturday in Lebanon. I would love to drive over there for that. My main website for car cruise information is www.KentuckyCruises.com. Our local informal car club has its cruise in a couple of weeks, and I’m damn sure will be there for that!
