Headlight is in!

I finally have a working adjustable headlight in my Gizmo! I did discover, however, that adjusting a Gizmo headlight is a bit different since the nose drops a fair bit when I sit in it compared to when it is empty. I finally just went out and drove it and then would stop and adjust the headlight and then drive some more. This headlight has a relatively sharp cutoff line so if it is aimed too low you can't see very far down the road.

This particular headlight has a 5W bulb in it too. I wired this small light to come on when the key is turned on and wired an ON-ON switch in the dash to turn on the headlight. The down position has the headlight off with the 5W light on. The up position turns off the 5W light and turns on the headlight. I guess you could say I have a running light mode.

As I talked about in my previous blog this mount has been a bit of a process. My goal was to build a unit which could be easily added to any Gizmo without having to do body work. Other than the less than careful extraction of the original fiberglass plug mold, I accomplished my goal.

Here are several pictures of the itterations I went through to get to the final product. I didn't take a picture of the original plastic sign material prototype. The next step was to see what it would be like to create a plastic mold of the headlight hole. I lined the hole with plastic wrap and filled it with wax. I supported a stick in the center of the wax to aid in pulling the plug out when it cooled. Here is the final carved result.

Next, I made a 1 inch thick model because I was thinking I would make the mount out of UHMW plastic.

Finally, the fiberglass cup idea was done. Below is an aluminum prototype plate made out of some damaged door kick-plate aluminum. I actually mounted the headlight and assiociated hardware to this plate. This showed that I would either have to carve the final aluminum plate thin around the mount holes and/or carve the plastic stops down on the plastic nuts. I ended up doing both. On this plate the top nut bent out the top of the hole and bent in the bottom.

Here is the fiberglas cup and final aluminum mounting plate. You can see the grinding marks above and below the top hole and to the sides of the side square hole. The eyebolts were mounted to the plate to hold them square and inplace while I used JB weld to glue them to the cup.

Here is the cup with the eyebolts cemented in place. If this doesn't work I will build another cup with the area where the screws go built up. I'll grind notches in the back side and install some blind nuts to bolt the front plate to this cup. You can see two screw holes beside the wire hole in the center of the cup. As it turned out, it was difficult to hold the nuts in place while the screws were tightened from inside the nose of the Gizmo and then install the headlight adjusting cup. If I have to take the unit out I'll be installing blind nuts in these holes.
Here is the finished unit with the aluminum plate painted. I didn't want to see it from the front.Here is the unit with the adjusting cup in place.
In this bottom view you can see that the adjusting cup is offset to the left side. This is to accomodate the adjusting screw on the right.


Here is the unit installed and ready for the headlight. You can see the damaged and partially repaiared portion of the nose.Here it is, ready for use!
If you have a Gizmo and want a similar unit send me an email. I can find out how much the guy who built the cup for me would charge to build you one too. I don't plan on making a kit out of this. I can give you a list of parts and dimensions I used to help you out, however.