Continuing with part 5 of the 1968 XL headlamp overhaul and upgrade.

For such a small part, my gosh was it intricate. It took about 2 hours to measure and model the little retainer in CAD.

3D printing came to the rescue with this one. I have a high temperature print head on the 3D printer and printed these in nylon. I tried ABS but it's too soft and weak for a small part. Nylon was the ticket for this.

They fit perfectly and I don't have to worry about anything polymer breaking on these for a long, long time to come.

Next up was figuring out if I could revitalize the die cast outer trim piece.

I studied these hide-a-way headlamps and I was impressed at what it took to produce these. These had to cost Ford a tidy sum to mass produce. The finish on these die cast grills is complex. First it's all chrome plated, then the top surface is masked off, then the whole thing silver painted, then the top and sides of the extrusions are masked off and the bottom flat areas are painted black. That's a long process on an assembly line!

I didn't have the masks they used, so first I polished the top side chrome. The I applied a light layer of Vaseline over it and spray painted the whole thing silver again.

After that, I wiped off the silver paint from the chrome face and then hand masked the protrusions so I could spray the bottom flat pieces semi-gloss black. Holy crap I'll never do that again. The masking tape didn't work so well because of how intricate these grills are.

This is my best attempt without a proper mask. Might I also point out once more how heavy those doors are.

This is the weight of the metal back bracket and the grill. Just over 5 pounds! That's 10 pounds worth of doors the vacuum servo has to raise and there's no weight compensation spring as found in a window regulator.

For fun I measured the whole lamp assembly. Over 14 pounds! I bet the entire hide-a-way headlamps with the massive die cast grills, servo, hoses and tank easily add 40 pounds to the car. That's a bit much.

One down and one to go. I thought this made a pretty good contrast between old and beat up "to be" refurbished.