Just finished an enjoyable small project on my 66 98 convertible.

On the '66 big cars, Olds riveted the headlight tension springs to the buckets. After 50+ years, my 1966 98 headlight springs had long since lost their tension.

Over the years I'd shimmed the bulbs with stuff in back to get some aiming ability back, but it was never right. Until today I hadn't figured out a fix that felt right enough to take a chance killing rare parts to pursue.

My big a-ha today (probably not new to some of you) was to grind out the old spring rivets, then dremel-cut the one end of replacement springs (Cutlass, or Chevy maybe, likely A-body) and simply wind the new springs to the right length into the rivet holes in the old headlight buckets.

The 1 remaining "hook" end of each spring goes into a slot on the stainless steel headlight retaining ring so the spun-in springs can't rotate enough to spin out.

I finally have tension back in the headlights. Looking forward to aiming them tonight.

For reference the two left springs below are orignals from 1966. Interesting to see they've stretched to different lengths. You can sort of see the rivets at the bottom. These are the good ones, not the rusty cruddy ones...

On the right are the new springs. The second from right is how they came from the vendor. The right most is cutoff which made spinning into the small rivet hole possible. I had to use a small screw driver to pry apart the lower most coil to get it through the rivet hole, but after a bit of wrestling it worked.


Here's my left high beam with new spring. It may be wound a coil or 2 too tight. No big deal, I can screw the springs in and out as time goes on to get the tension level I like best.