Before and after

These before-and-after posts are fun, though they tend to leave me with a lot of work to do. It would probably be easier to restore both of these at one time, but it's too much fun to place them side by side in this state to see how far the parts for this car have to come.

The right side headlight assembly (these are sitting upside down) will be restored soon. All parts needed to restore this save for the position switch are on hand.

This was a very expensive part to restore. With the kit of parts, the headlight bulbs and the paint, this project cost about $700. Glad that the labor around here is free.

The right side is of course a mirror image of the left, which goes for which side the cotter pins and position switch are on as well. This seems insignificant, but these sorts of things matter to judges. The assembly manual comes in handy for this, of course.

The only mystery is how these assemblies are adjusted so they rise to the same correct height and also close flush to the hood surround. Once the car is painted and these are ready to install in it, this mystery will have to be solved.

It's disappointing that the plastic nuts that hold the headlight buckets to the assembly and allow them to be adjustable are white instead of black. That the machine screws that came with this kit aren't Phillips heads and are zinc plated and not black Parkerized isn't really great either, but that can be changed later.

Finding a NOS set of plastic nuts will be a goal for later.