Hideaway Headlights WORKING on the 1965 Buick Riviera after 20 Years!

The 1965 Buick Riviera has some of the coolest hideaway headlights ever made and these have never worked for as long as we’ve owned the car. It’s time to get these working again and I’m using a linear actuator conversion from Dickster’s Smar “T” Pants. It turns out there were a handful of missing parts that I chose to make as opposed to looking for overpriced original pieces.
Here’s a link to the headlight conversion I used on this car: dicksterssmart...
In starting to make these work I had to take stock of what was there and what I needed to find or make. Turns out, the clips that hold the ball to the socket were missing and I made my own out of a set of clips from an old gas strut. Next was getting the mechanism freed up so that it could work. I used some liquid wrench penetrating oil to get these moving.
The next missing part was the sockets up at the motor itself. These have been missing for who knows how long. I sourced some new sockets from an industrial parts catalog and made some pieces that would get welded to them. Using those strips, I drilled a hole in the middle to allow for adjustment similar to the factory style. Once welded together, they fit nicely over the linear actuator conversion as well as the original unit.
With the mechanism now connected, the next part was getting things wired up. Luckily, I found everything I needed under hood in the same location as the original headlight motor relay. The light blue wire gave me the signal I needed, power and ground were available right there too. I didn’t need to really cut up any of the factory wiring to do this install and it can easily be put back to completely original should the need ever arise.
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