SRT-8 Daytona Clone

So I decided to take apart my headlight doors and mechanism to refine some stuff I didn't like. I had re hinged the doors to the front of the opening so that the sweep of the door would be minimized in order to push the headlights as far forward as possible but I did it with some stainless steel piano hinge. It worked but was a little crappy looking and didn't work as freely as I would like. So I went ahead and redesigned the hinge using a piece of 3/8 tubing with  threaded inserts in the ends and used some stainless steel shoulder bolts to secure the tube to a pivot plate.  I secured the doors on the same plate I had already fused to just under the front of the headlight door where the piano hinge was fixed to 10/24 threaded inserts along the plate.

When I first mocked up the mechanism for the headlight doors I was determined to use the window motor left over from the rear doors of the 06. It worked o.k. but was a little to quick. Swampwing2 convinced me to head in the direction of using a gen 2 Fiero headlight motor. Since I was only using one motor I was able to score a control module from the motor re-builder that was dead on one side for $25.00  The beauty of the control module is it removes the need for any limit switches because it senses the increased amperage draw when the doors hit a mechanical stop and it cuts power to the motor. It took a while to get the arms to the right lengths in order for the motor to run at a slower speed even though the motor is geared lower than the window motor. I put some adjustable arms to the doors in order to allow me to tighten up the doors to the nose.

Here is a link to a video of the doors in operation. 

This video shows how I rigged up the drop down doors for the head lights on the Daytona project.
Posted by Steve Mirabelli on Sunday, November 9, 2014